A new modelling study uncovers how perceptions of climate change, the cost and effectiveness of mitigation strategies, and political responses all interact to determine the course of global warming over the 21st century
) reveals an important role for parameters associated with the opinion, mitigation, cognition and policy components, particularly the strength of social conformity , the strength of mitigation technology feedback and effectiveness , the responsiveness of political institutions and the role of cognitive biases . Parameters from the adoption component notably do not tend to be distinguishing characteristics of policy and emissions pathways.
Drivers of variance in model behaviour were further explored by fitting random-forest models to two outputs of the 100,000 Monte Carlo runs of the calibrated model: policy in 2030 and cumulative emissions over 2020–2100. Normalized values of the 22 model parameters are used as explanatory variables. Extended Data Figuregives the minimum depth distributions for the most important 10 variables for each model.
However, despite the wide range of plausible behaviour, systematic exploration of the model parameter space combined with observational constraints on parameter values where possible can bound the space of probable outcomes. Despite uncertainties in many parameters, none of the policy–emissions clusters that we identified represent a pure business-as-usual world without climate policy.
We therefore find that socio-politico-technical feedback processes can be decisive for climate policy and emissions outcomes. Yet, they require a distinct and deliberate modelling approach. Exploring emissions pathways as an endogenous outcome of the coupled climate–social system differs from the typical use of emissions scenarios as exogenous inputs into either energy–economic or general circulation models.
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