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Objective of JRC PESETA II project

The objective of the JRC PESETA II project (Projection of Economic impacts of climate change in Sectors of the European Union based on bottom-up Analysis) is to make a consistent multi-sectoral assessment of the impacts of climate change in Europe for the 2071-2100 time horizon. The project methodology has two distinctive features. Firstly, it is based on bottom-up biophysical impact models results. Bottom-up models take into account the relationship between climate change and biophysical impacts in a structural way, modelling all the relevant interactions and mechanisms. Secondly, the assessment is made in a consistent way, where all biophysical impact models use the same climate data, and take into account other horizontal issues.

The project is largely based on the knowledge and experience derived from the previous PESETA project, concluded in 2009.

JRC PESETA II project goes beyond PESETA as it considers more impact categories and more climate runs. PESETA considered the impacts in five areas: agriculture, coastal systems, river floods, tourism and human health. PESETA II extends the coverage to nine areas, adding energy, transport infrastructure, forest fires, and habitat suitability. Furthermore, while PESETA look at four climate runs, in PESETA II up to 15 climate runs have been modelled by some of the sectoral teams.

Both PESETA and PESETA II projects have largely benefited from past DG Research projects that have developed impact modelling capabilities (e.g. the FP7 ClimateCost project) and high-resolution climate scenarios for Europe (the FP6 ENSEMBLES project). In particular, the economic assessment of PESETA II uses impact evidence on coastal impacts and agriculture in the 2080s from the FP7 ClimateCost project, which is greatly acknowledged.

Motivation of the project

The main motivation of launching the series of climate impact assessments has been to better understand how climate change can affect Europe, in order to derive useful insights for climate adaptation. That requires high resolution climate impact assessment. Indeed, with the proposed disaggregated PESETA methodology high time-space resolution climate data feed highly detailed sector-specific impact models to estimate the biophysical impacts.

Such structural approach, as opposed to the reduced form formulation, aims indeed to consistently integrate what is known on climate impacts in the various natural sciences disciplines into the economic analysis. In fact, the approach benefits from the many rich recent developments in modelling biophysical climate impacts and modelling regional climate change.

Teams

Most of the modelling work of PESETA II has been made within the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission. The following JRC institutes have been involved in the project. Firstly, the Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES), through the following units:

• JRC.H.3 Forest Resources and Climate
• JRC.H.4 Monitoring Agricultural Resources
• JRC.H.7 Climate Risk Management
• JRC.H.8 Sustainability Assessment

Secondly, the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), through the following units:

• JRC.J.1 Economics of Climate Change, Energy and Transport
• JRC.J.4 Agriculture and Life Sciences in the Economy

Preliminary results in the EU Strategy on Adaptation

The results of the JRC PESETA II are preliminary, as they are being subject to additional review. The preliminary economic results have been published in the Impact Assessment accompanying the EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change, 16 April 2013, and are explained in the economic results label.

Acknowledgements

The project uses climate data from the FP6 ENSEMBLES project, and impact estimates for agriculture and sea level rise from the FP7 ClimateCost project. The authors wish to thank Daniela Jacob for providing the E1 climate data, and the members of the PESETA II project Advisory Board and JRC colleagues for their very useful comments and feedbacks.