Global simulations of the interactions between climate and the economy

Numerical modeling of global physical climate change caused by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations has progressed tremendously in recent decades, with both model resolution and level of complexity rapidly improving. Simulations of the economic consequences of climate change have similarly gone through rapid transformation recently, and now represents a rapidly growing area in the field of economics. However, these two modeling efforts have so far largely existed in separate worlds, despite the obvious close connections and coupling between the processes and phenomena they seek to represent.

This presentation will introduce a pioneering effort to create a numerical modeling framework that joins the two worlds, by coupling a state-of-the-art model of the economic consequences of climate change with the Norwegian Earth System Model NorESM. The first results from a pilot of the modeling framework will be presented, and the wealth of research and teaching opportunities that the framework opens up will be discussed.