Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
PIK addresses crucial scientific questions in the fields of global change, climate impacts and sustainable development. Researchers from the natural and social sciences work together to generate interdisciplinary insights and to provide sound information for decision making. PIK's main methodologies are systems and scenarios analysis, modeling, computer simulation, and data integration.
Research at PIK is organized in four interdisciplinary Research Domains including: Earth System Analysis, Climate Impacts & Vulnerabilities, Sustainable Solutions, and Transdisciplinary Concepts & Methods. The objective of the 'Climate Impacts and Vulnerabilities' Research Domain is to assess multi-sector climate impacts and adaptation options, including socio-economic costs, at 2°C global warming and beyond. Cross-scale interactions between global modeling approaches and comparative regional case studies are taken into account through comprehensive project portfolios.
This research agenda ranges from well-established single-sector and multi-sector climate impact assessments at the regional level to innovative single-sector and multi-sector climate impact assessments at the global level. Cross-scale interactions between global modeling approaches and comparative regional case studies are explicitly taken into account. Long-term global scenarios with a high spatial resolution on socio-economic development, climate impact assessments, and adaptation strategies are used as inputs by regional and sectoral case studies. Sector-specific regional assessments systematically contribute their detailed results to highly aggregated global syntheses of climate impacts and costs. Global-scale assessments can guide the selection of regional hot-spots for detailed impacts studies. Multi-sector impact aggregation and damage assessments take advantage of strong interdisciplinary research teams.
Some of the overarching research questions at PIK are:
- What are climate change impacts and socio-economic damages at 2, 3, 4 or 5°C global warming?
- What are the risks of severe climate change impacts?
- How can multi-sector impacts be linked and aggregated?
- What are synergies between adaptation and mitigation?
PIK was founded in 1992 and is a non-profit organization. It is a member of the Leibniz Association and is funded to a roughly equal extent by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Federal State of Brandenburg.
Phone: +49 331 288 2637
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