Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

About: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research is a facility organization based out in Potsdam, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Climate change & Global warming. The organization has 1519 authors who have published 5098 publications receiving 367023 citations.

Impacts of climate change on energy systems in global and regional scenarios

Abstract: Although our knowledge of climate change impacts on energy systems has increased substantially over the past few decades, there remains a lack of comprehensive overview of impacts across spatial scales. Here, we analyse results of 220 studies projecting climate impacts on energy systems globally and at the regional scale. Globally, a potential increase in cooling demand and decrease in heating demand can be anticipated, in contrast to slight decreases in hydropower and thermal energy capacity. Impacts at the regional scale are more mixed and relatively uncertain across regions, but strongest impacts are reported for South Asia and Latin America. Our assessment shows that climate impacts on energy systems at regional and global scales are uncertain due partly to the wide range of methods and non-harmonized datasets used. For a comprehensive assessment of climate impacts on energy, we propose a consistent multi-model assessment framework to support regional-to-global-scale energy planning.

Projections of Future Anthropogenic Climate Change

Abstract: This chapter focuses on summarising projections of future anthropogenic climate change for the Baltic Sea Basin. This includes the science of climate change and how future projections are made, taking into account anthropogenic influence on greenhouse gases (GHG). Looking forward to-ward future climates requires using state-of-the-art modelling tools to represent climate processes.

Implementing Long-Term Climate Policy: Time Inconsistency, Domestic Politics, International Anarchy

Abstract: As a quintessential long-term policy problem, climate change poses two major challenges. The first is to develop, under considerable uncertainty, a plan for allocating resources over time to achieve an effective policy response. The second is to implement this plan, once arrived at, consistently over time. We consider the second of these two challenges, arguing that it consists of three interrelated, commitment problems—the time inconsistency problem, the domestic politics problem, and the anarchy problem. We discuss each of these commitment problems in some detail, explore how they relate to climate policy, and suggest institutional designs that may help limit their adverse impact. While each of these commitment problems is difficult to tackle on its own, climate change requires us to cope with all of them at once. This is likely one major reason why we have so far made only modest headway on this vital issue.

Development of the ecohydrological model SWIM for regional impact studies and vulnerability assessment

Abstract: In this paper the ecohydrological model SWIM developed for regional impact assessment is presented, and examples of approaches to climate and land use change impact studies are described. SWIM is a continuous-time semi-distributed ecohydrological model, integrating hydrological processes, vegetation, nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) and sediment transport at the river basin scale. Its spatial disaggregation scheme has three levels: (1) basin, (2) sub-basins and (3) hydrotopes within sub-basins. The model was extensively tested and validated for hydrological processes, nitrogen dynamics, crop yield and erosion (mainly in mesoscale sub-basins of the German part of the Elbe River basin). After appropriate validation in representative sub-basins, the model can be applied at the regional scale for impact studies. Particular interest in the global change impact studies is given to effects of expected changes in climate and land use on hydrological processes and agro-ecosystems, including water balance components, water quality and crop yield. This paper (a) introduces the reader to the class of process-based ecohydrological catchment scale models, (b) introduces SWIM as one such model, and (c) presents two examples of impact studies performed with SWIM for the federal state of Brandenburg (Germany), which overlaps with the lowland part of the Elbe drainage area. The impact studies provide a better understanding of the complex interactions between climate, hydrological processes and vegetation, and improve our potential adaptation to the expected changes. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Evolutionary Pinning Control and Its Application in UAV Coordination

Abstract: Maximizing the controllability of complex networks by selecting appropriate nodes and designing suitable control gains is an effective way to control distributed complex networks. In this paper, some novel particle swarm optimization (PSO) approaches are developed to enhance the controllability of distributed networks. The proposed PSO algorithm is combined with a global search scheme and a modified simulated binary crossover (MSBX). In addition, the node importance-based method is introduced to study the controllability of distributed complex networks. A set of experiments show that the PSO with the global search and the MSBX (PSO-GSBX) can outperform some well-known evolutionary algorithms and pinning schemes. Following the PSO-GSBX approach, some interesting findings about pinned nodes, coupling strengths and the eigenvalues for enhancing the controllability of distributed networks are revealed. The obtained results and methods are applied in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) coordination to show their effectiveness. These findings will help to understand controllability of complex networks and can be applied in control science and industrial system.