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CLICCS
Cluster of ExcellenceClimate, Climatic Change,
and Society (CLICCS)

Photo: J.Marotzke/ M.Böttinger

Theme B

B5 - Coping with Climate-Related Uncertainties and Variabilities

Chairs: Moritz Drupp (UHH), Andreas Lange (UHH), Jochem Marotzke (MPI-M)

CLICCS-funded Scientists: Juliane Koch (UHH)

Team: Vito Avakumović (UHH), Johanna Baehr (UHH), Pier Basaglia (UHH), Michael Berlemann (HSU), Björn Bos (UHH), Michael Brüggemann (UHH), Simon Disque (UHH), Moritz Drupp (UHH), Anke Gerber (UHH), Jonas Grunau (UHH),  Hernmann Held (UHH), Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw (UHH), Jörg Knieling (HCU), Chao Li (MPI-M), Enrico Longo (UHH), Aljoscha Minnich (UHH), Grischa Perino (UHH), Hauke Roggenkamp (HSU), Felix Schaumann (UHH), Alexander Stanley (HCU), Michael Tanner (UHH), Stefan Traub (HSU), Martin Wickel (HCU), Ole Wilms (UHH) Cathrin Zengerling (HCU)

Project B5 takes a comprehensive stance at the role of uncertainties on climate-related decisions. On one hand, decision criteria need to allow for both epistemic and aleatoric uncertainty and still be normatively appealing. On the other hand, it is crucial to understand how individuals and groups deal with uncertainties when making climate relevant (or policy) decisions. For this, it is important to understand how uncertainties are perceived and how diverse ways of communicating uncertainties affect decisions. Project B5 is structured in three working packages. WP 1 targets developing consistent decision criteria that also allow to integrate behavioral (economic) insights. WP 2 considers how diverse actors handle uncertainties and variability. WP 3 uses these insights to create scenarios that take into account climate and social dynamics.

Project B5 contributes to CLICCS’ overall objective by investigating how uncertainties and variabilities in natural and social processes interact and by prototypically generating more plausible scenarios of climate futures, hereby integrating and complementing process- or stakeholder-based knowledge from A6, B, and C.

Isoquants of the aggregated utility function V(.) for the 2-dimensional case. The condition ‘grad V is parallel to (1,1)’ implies that the dashed 45°-oriented lines are tangential to the isoquants as then grad V is perpendicular to them.

Photo: After Held (2019).

WP1. Developing consistent decision criteria that incorporate behavioral realities

We deal with the development of decision criteria minimizing the tension between behavioral realities and a desire for consistency.

Probability of reaching threshold, by treatment

Photo: After Carlsson et al. (2021).

WP 2 Considering how diverse actors handle uncertainties and variability

We investigate how diverse social actors deal with uncertainty and variability.

Figure 2: (a) Global surface temperature change and (b) consumption loss, for a temperature target (red), a sea-level-rise (SLR) target (solid blue), and a rate-of-SLR target (dashed blue). (C) CBGE loss for all climate targets.

Photo: After Li et al. (2020)

WP 3: Scenario generation

We generate scenarios that are consistent with more realistic insights on climate and social dynamics.