Regional Analysis

This project focuses on developing a system- and pathway-level lifecycle assessment (LCA) tool, which is called the Sustainable Energy Systems Analysis Modeling Environment (SESAME), a publicly available, open-access model with multi-sector representation. To provide economy-wide scenarios for the SESAME tool, an economy-wide, multi-sector, multi-region computable general equilibrium (CGE) model (the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis model (EPPA)) will be employed.

Plausible Energy Futures: Phase I - A Framework for Evaluating Options. Impacts and National Energy Choices

This project continues a collaborative effort with RTI that is providing analytical support to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Economics Branch. The objective is to simulate environmental policy impacts on the US using a recursive-dynamic, computable general equilibrium modeling framework. For certain applications, the model incorporates linkage to partial equilibrium representations of the electricity sector from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) to facilitate robust energy and environmental policy analyses. 

Economy-Wide Modeling of Energy/Environment Policy Scenarios

This project supports an overall development strategy toward an integrated, interoperable model system utilizing components developed by PNNL, MIT and the PCHES group to explore regional multi-sectoral dynamics of energy, land and water systems in the US. The project seeks to advance the modeling capabilities, tools and approaches of the research groups in preparation for jointly examining multi-sector, multi-resource responses to multiple forcers.

Multi-Sector, Multi-Resource Interactions with Multiple Forcers

This year’s American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting will be held online, making it one of the world’s largest virtual scientific conferences ever. Held December 1-17 (with most scientific programming taking place December 7-11) and presenting more than 1,000 hours of content, AGU20 will feature live and pre-recorded oral presentations and virtual posters from leading Earth and space science researchers. The conference theme is “Shape the Future of Science."

AGU Fall Meeting goes online for 2020

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is at a crossroads. Recent long-term studies of the area indicate that rising temperatures and evaporation rates will likely further deplete scarce water resources critical to meeting the nation’s agricultural, industrial and domestic needs; more extreme flooding events could endanger lives, economic vitality and infrastructure; and a combination of increasing heat and humidity levels may ultimately render the Kingdom uninhabitable.

Saudi Arabia faces increased heat, humidity, precipitation extremes by mid-century
Mid-century changes in the mean and extreme climate in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and implications for water harvesting and climate adaptation

Abstract: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is a water-scarce region with a dry, desert climate, yet flood-producing precipitation events and heat extremes lead to loss of life and damages to local infrastructure, property and economy. Due to its distinctive natural and man-made spatial features (e.g., coastal features, wadis, agricultural areas) studying changes in the mean climate and extreme events requires higher-resolution climate projections than those available from the current generation of Earth System Models.

Here, a high-resolution convection-permitting regional climate model is used to downscale the middle of the 21st century (2041–2050) climate projections of the Community Earth System Model (CESM) under representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 and for a historical time period (2008–2017) focusing on two months (August and November) within KSA’s dry-hot and wet seasons, where extreme events have historically been observed more frequently. Downscaling of climate reanalysis is also performed for the historical time period (2008–2017) to evaluate the downscaling methodology.

An increase in the intensity and frequency of precipitation events is found in August by mid-century, particularly along the mountainous western coast of KSA, suggesting potential for water harvesting. Conversely, the northern flank of the Empty Quarter experiences a noticeable reduction in mean and extreme precipitation rates during the wet season. Increasing August heat index is found to particularly make regional habitability difficult in Jeddah by mid-century.

According to the United States Energy Information Agency, a boom in shale gas extraction led to a dramatic decline in coal use in the U.S. power sector within a single decade. Between 2007 and 2016, the nation’s coal-fired generation and consumption fell by nearly 40 percent, replaced largely by cheaper natural gas. Substituting this cleaner-burning fuel reduced U.S. carbon dioxide emissions considerably, suggesting to some that the shale gas boom may well reduce these emissions for the long term.

Bridge fuel or bridge too far?
The changing nature of hydroclimatic risks across South Africa

Abstract: In this study, we present results from a large ensemble of projected changes in seasonal precipitation and near-surface air temperature changes for the nation of South Africa.

The ensemble is based on a combination of pattern-change responses derived from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP-5) climate models along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Integrated Global Systems Model (MIT-IGSM), an intermediate complexity earth-system model coupled to a global economic model that evaluates uncertainty in socio-economic growth, anthropogenic emissions, and global environmental response. Numerical experimentation with the MIT-IGSM considered four scenarios of future climate and socio-economic development to span a range of possible global actions to abate greenhouse gas emissions through the 21st century. We evaluate distributions of surface-air temperature and precipitation change over three regions across South Africa: western (WSoAfr), central (CSoAfr), and eastern (ESoAfr) South Africa.  

In all regions, by mid-century, we find a strong likelihood (greater than 50%) that temperatures will rise considerably higher than the current climate’s range of variability 
(a threefold increase over the current climate’s two-standard deviation range of variability). In addition, scenarios that consider more aggressive global climate targets (e.g. 2C and 15C scenarios) all but eliminate the risk of these acutely salient temperature increases. For precipitation, there is a preponderance of risk toward decreased precipitation (3 to 4 times higher than increased) for western and central parts of South Africa.

There is a clear benefit seen within the evolving hydroclimatic risks as a result of strong climate targets, such as limiting the global climate warming to 1.5˚C by 2100. We find that the risk of precipitation changes in the 15C scenario toward the end of this century (2065–2074) is nearly identical to that seen in the REF scenario during the 2030s. Thus, the climate risk that may be experienced in a decade as a result of current global actions to reduce emissions could be delayed by 30 years, and would provide invaluable lead-time for national efforts to be put in place to prepare, fortify, and/or adapt to these changing environments of risk.

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