New Version of C-ROADS Available

November 6, 2015 by Shanna Edberg

Climate Interactive has just released a new version of the C-ROADS climate policy simulator. C-ROADS enables you to examine the long-term impacts of national and regional greenhouse gas emissions reductions. New features enable assessment of the national contributions (INDCs) to the Paris climate talks, and more.

Using C-ROADS, we released an analysis of the national plans being made in the Paris climate talks last month. Over 500 media outlets worldwide have covered our results, and we have been in touch with many about the implications of the findings.

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Included in this new release of C-ROADS is:

1. Calibration to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (AR5) — C-ROADS now uses the IPCC’s RCP8.5 scenario as the default or reference scenario representing business as usual.
2. Explore the impact of national contributions to the COP21 Paris climate talks — Settings files have been packaged with C-ROADS that allow users to load the intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) that countries have submitted for the upcoming climate negotiations. Within C-ROADS, load the ‘INDC Strict’ run manually or navigate to the ‘Settings’ tab and select “Add contributions to 2015 climate talks data.”
3. Use C-ROADS for supporting the 3-region version of the World Climate Exercise — Given the popularity of running mock-UN climate negotiations in the lead up to COP21, we have included a World Climate mode that divides the world into Developed Countries, Developing A Countries, and Developing B countries.

Other updates include:

• Adjustments to how inputs from Excel are made. Click on the ‘Excel Input’ button under “Set Defaults” on the Welcome page. Then check or uncheck the box for “Allow Excel Inputs”.
• The lower limit of climate sensitivity can now go as low as 1.5°C (rather than 2°C).
• Graphs are provided with comparisons between C-ROADS projections for temperature and CO2 concentration to those of RCP 8.5, 6.0, 4.5 and 2.6.
• Population scenarios that match the UN may be adjusted.
• Updated historical data to include most recent available.
• Updated all start years to be 2015.
• The Excel and Non-Excel input versions have been combined in a single C-ROADS version. To activate the Excel version, click on the ‘Excel Input’ button under “Set Defaults” on the Welcome page. Check or uncheck the box for “Allow Excel Inputs”. You must have a working copy of Microsoft Excel.

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