This event will take place in-person at 12pm noon at HouseZero, 20 Sumner Rd. Please RSVP to: [email protected].
The 2023 Global Change Outlook continues a process, started in 2012 by the MIT Joint Program, of providing a periodic update on the direction the planet is heading in terms of economic growth and its implications for resource use and the environment. To obtain an integrated look at food, water, energy and climate, as well as the oceans, atmosphere and land that comprise the Earth system, we use the MIT Integrated Global System Modeling (IGSM) framework. Consisting primarily of the Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model and the MIT Earth System Model (MESM), the IGSM is a linked set of computer models developed by the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change to analyze interactions among human and Earth systems.
For our Global Change Outlook assessments, our intent is to represent as best we can the existing energy and environmental policies and commitments along with potential future pathways. Using rigorous uncertainty sampling methods, we employ the IGSM framework to create large ensembles of projections that allows us to provide a full distribution of possible human and Earth systems’ outcomes for a given emissions scenario. This year’s Outlook reports on projected effects of population and economic growth, technology improvements, climate policy and other factors on energy and land use, emissions and climate, and water and agriculture. These results will highlight, compare, and contrast the impacts and benefits between a “Current Trends” pathway in global commitments (e.g., the Paris Agreement) and “Accelerated Actions” toward a more aggressive climate target (e.g., limit to 1.5C warming by the end of the century).
SPEAKER: C. ADAM SCHLOSSER
Dr. C. Adam Schlosser is currently a Senior Research Scientist in the Center for Global Change Science, and also serves as the Deputy Director for the Joint Program at MIT. Prior to his appointment at MIT, Dr. Schlosser was an Associate Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Research Scientist at the Center for Ocean Land Atmosphere Studies. He conducted his postdoctoral work at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. His primary interests are the modeling, prediction, and risk assessment of the natural, managed, and built water-energy-land systems using the MIT’s Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM) that includes model development of the Global Land System (GLS) and Water Resource System (WRS). Dr. Schlosser has also undertaken studies of hydrology, weather, and climate and their predictability and limits-to-prediction. In doing so, he has worked with a wide range of numerical models, ranging from process-level to global-scale models, as well as observational data for evaluation and complementary analyses. He also has participated in and led international experiments aimed to assess the performance of Earth-system model components and predictions. In earlier work, he served on the NASA Energy and Water Cycle Study (NEWS) Science Integration Team to improve our observational capabilities for monitoring and understanding the Earth’s global water and energy cycles. Other collaborative research activities include extreme events and associating potential changes and risks on the natural, managed, and built environments; water-resource risk assessments to inform mitigation and adaptation strategies; biodiversity; and renewable-energy resource and intermittency assessments.