The Collaboratorium uses three primary kinds of models.
- Climate models
These are models of the world's physical systems and are used to project the impact of future greenhouse gas emissions on the world's climate. The most sophisticated of these are known as general circulation models (GCMs), which serves as an important input to the assessment reports prepared periodically by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
- Integrated assessment models
These models assess the impact of various policies designed to address climate change. IAMs typically incorporate economic and technological variables, as well as a physical science model that is a less complex than a GCM.
- Bottoms up technology models
These models assess the impact on emissions of adoption of new technologies. The launch version of the Collaboratorium does not include any technology models, but this is an area where models could be incorporated soon.
Current models
The launch version of the Collaboratorium includes the following models:
- Climate models
C-LEARN, a Web based climate simulation
Sea level rise module (based on Rahmstorf’s correlation between historical temperature increases and sea level rise)
Physical impacts model from the Tyndall Center
- Integrated assessment models
Climate change damage cost model based on DICE and PAGE2002
Climate change mitigation cost scenarios from the CCSP study (using model runs of IGSM, MiniCAM, and MERGE)
Future models
In the future the Collaboratorium will incorporate extensions of existing models, as well as new models, based on how the Community chooses to augment and add to the current suite of models.
As part of this effort, the Collaboratorium Community anticipates embracing the principles of radically open modeling, where large numbers of users will work together to enhance the modeling capability of the system.
The current thinking of the Collaboratorium Community is that extensions to existing models and new models can be proposed by any members. But final approval by accredited experts must be given before new models or new functionality for existing models is made available in the system.
For more on how radically open modeling could work, see Stages in the development of Radically Open Modeling.