The main objectives of this work package are:
- To adapt the leading integrated assessment model, PAGE, to include the main influences of changes to the Arctic marine environment.
- To assess the social and economic impacts of changes to the Arctic marine environment and identify key socio-economic vulnerabilities and opportunities globally and regionally for the Arctic.
- To value the impacts of Arctic-related climate change and the costs of policies to abate and adapt to the changing Arctic marine environment.
Approach:
Our approach is to utilize and adapt the PAGE integrated assessment model to the ICE-ARC project. An earlier version of the model, PAGE2002, was used in the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change to value the impacts from climate change, and is one of the leading integrated assessment models worldwide. PAGE can calculate the amount by which the Net Present Value (NPV) of impacts, aggregated over the whole time period to 2200, increases if one more tonne of CO2 is emitted, or decreases if one less tonne is emitted – the social cost of carbon (SCC).
The most recent version of the model, PAGE09, uses simple equations to simulate the results from more complex specialised scientific and economic models. It does this while accounting for the profound uncertainty that exists around climate change (in terms of drivers as well as its effects). Calculations are made for eight world regions including the EU, ten time periods to the year 2200, and four impact sectors (sea level, economic, non-economic, and discontinuities). All calculations are performed probabilistically, using Latin Hypercube Sampling to build up probability distributions of the results. The results for two policies and the difference between them are calculated in a single run of the model, so that the incremental costs and benefits of different abatement and adaptation policies can be found.
