Enhancing the relevance of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways for climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability research

This paper discusses the role and relevance of the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and the new scenarios that combine SSPs with representative concentration pathways (RCPs) for climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability (IAV) research. It first provides an overview of uses of social-environmental scenarios in IAV studies and identifies the main shortcomings of earlier such scenarios. Second, the paper elaborates on two aspects of the SSPs and new scenarios that would improve their usefulness for IAV studies compared to earlier scenario sets: (i) enhancing their applicability while retaining coherence across spatial scales, and (ii) adding indicators of importance for projecting vulnerability. The paper therefore presents an agenda for future research, recommending that SSPs incorporate not only the standard variables of population and gross domestic product, but also indicators such as income distribution, spatial population, human health and governance.

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Copyright 2014 Springer
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Author van Ruijven, Bastiaan J.
Levy, M.
Agrawal, A.
Biermann, F.
Birkmann, J.
Carter, T.
Ebi, K.
Garschagen, M.
Jones, Bryan
Jones, R.
Kemp-Benedict, E.
Kok, M.
Kok, K.
Lemos, M.
Lucas, P.
Orlove, B.
Pachauri, S.
Parris, T.
Patwardhan, A.
Petersen, A.
Preston, B.
Ribot, J.
Rothman, D.
Schweizer, Vanessa
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2014-02-01T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
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Resource Version N/A
Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2025-07-12T01:13:09.313604
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:13273
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation van Ruijven, Bastiaan J., Levy, M., Agrawal, A., Biermann, F., Birkmann, J., Carter, T., Ebi, K., Garschagen, M., Jones, Bryan, Jones, R., Kemp-Benedict, E., Kok, M., Kok, K., Lemos, M., Lucas, P., Orlove, B., Pachauri, S., Parris, T., Patwardhan, A., Petersen, A., Preston, B., Ribot, J., Rothman, D., Schweizer, Vanessa. (2014). Enhancing the relevance of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways for climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability research. UCAR/NCAR - Library. https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7rb75j9. Accessed 01 August 2025.

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