The IPCC Data Distribution Centre Why Does the DDC Exist?

The purpose of this Data Distribution Centre is to set the stage for the rapid uptake of more recent climate change science by researchers in the impacts community, and for improved consistency in the scenarios adopted in different assessments. Enhanced compatibility between impacts studies is of great importance when evaluating and synthesising results across regions and sectors which is a major goal of Working Group II of the IPCC for its Third Assessment Report (TAR). The DDC, by distributing climate scenario and related information to climate change impacts researchers throughout theworld, will ensure that all researchers have the possibility of working with a consistent set of scenarios. This co-ordination will allow climate change impacts research to be better integrated globally, thus enhancing the value of the IPCC TAR.

Through the DDC, impacts researchers will have access to data from recent transient climate change experiments. These represent an advance over older equilibrium experiments, which have been used in the majority of previous impacts assessments. Improved observed global baseline climate data will allow both a better calibration of impact models and an examination of the effects of natural climate variability on impact sectors. Consistent scenarios of other concurrent environmental changes, such as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and global sea-level, will also be provided. Socio-economic scenarios will accompany these climate datasets and provide a reference scenario for the future without climate change.

The establishment of this DDC is a logical development from the publication by the IPCC in 1994 of a set of climate scenarios and socio-economic projections for use by Working Group II lead authors for the Second Assessment Report (Greco,S. et al., 1994, 'Climate Scenarios and Socio-economic Projections for IPCC WGII Assessment', WGII Technical Support Unit, Washington DC, 12pp. + Appendices). The DDC will provide for the Third Assessment Report a more comprehensive set of climate scenarios and related information, and will enable greater penetration of these data into the research community, accompanied by more extensive guidelines and illustrations of their use in impacts research.