Human-induced global warming affects our societies through changes in weather patterns, mean climate and extremes. These climate changes have worldwide consequences for communities, economies and ecosystems, which are overall negatively affected for most countries.

Relying on decades of scientific data, global climate action is accelerating to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, as well as to adapt to current and expected changes, in order to secure future development, welfare and biodiversity. This module will introduce basic elements of the recent science of Climate Change. We then highlight the knowledge tools used for development of policies for both mitigation and adaptation, but zoom in on the models that inform national adaptation strategies. The modelling tools range from empirical, to semi-empirical and process-based models.

We will discuss these categories of models on the first morning. We will be looking into individual sectors, particularly important for the Global South, incl. water & food security, marine & land ecosystems, etc. We will subsequently look into how economic effects of climate change are estimated, incl. on GDP, debt and inflation, as well as the benefits of adaptation efforts. We will address these topics both theoretically and through assignments using (not programming) a simplified cross-sectoral integrated model during the afternoon session of this module. Finally, during the morning session of the second day, we will present recent cases of using such models for public policy. Participants will be invited to discuss advantages, disadvantages and optimal application of such models for informing decision-making processes.