ENGAGE Global Scenarios

This data set includes global climate change mitigation scenarios as summarized by Riahi et al., 2021. The scenarios are developed as part of the ENGAGE project and were assessed in terms of the their investment implications (Bertram et al., 2021), their land-use dynamics (Hasegawa et al., 2021) as we all as with respect to their costs and benefits (Drouret et al., 2021). The scenarios include a current national policies scenario and an NDC scenario that depict relevant near-term GHG emission tends and targets. In the long-term, two types of CO₂ emission budgets are implemented, so called “net-zero budgets” and “end-of-century” budgets. The “net-zero-budget” scenarios assume climate policies that limit the remaining cumulative CO₂ emissions until net zero CO₂ emissions are reached. These scenarios limit the temperature overshoot and do not rely on global net-negative CO₂ emissions to keep warming below the intended temperature limit. In contrast, the “end-of-century budget” scenarios assume long-term climate policies that limit cumulative CO₂ emissions over the full course of the 21^st century. Depending on the availability of carbon dioxide removal options, these scenarios may comprise high temperature overshoot and global net negative CO₂ emissions in the second half of the century. The near-term dimension of current national policies until 2020 or NDCs until 2030 is then combined with reaching the net-zero and full-century CO₂ emissions budgets. To cover a relevant range of temperature outcomes (which in addition to the budgets themselves also determined by mitigation of non-CO₂ GHG and aerosol emissions), the budgets are varied between 200 and 3000 GtCO₂ in steps of 50 – 500 GtCO₂.

The data is available for download at the ENGAGE Scenario Explorer. The license permits use of the scenario ensemble for scientific research and science communication, but restricts redistribution of substantial parts of the data. Please refer to the FAQ and legal code for more information.