Bart J. Strengers

• Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency

Biomass will likely play an important role in a climate-neutral, circular economy. At the same time, there is ongoing public debate on biomass. Biomass use, in any case, needs to comply with clear sustainability criteria, and international climate goals should not be called into question. Future availability and a responsible use of biomass very mu...

Climate change mitigation pathways have highlighted both the critical role of land‐use emissions, and the potential use of biofuels as a low‐emission energy carrier. This has led to concerns about the emission mitigation potential of biofuels, particularly related to indirect land‐use change (ILUC). This arises when the production of biofuels displ...

In deze achtergrondstudie is, op basis van recente literatuur en input van experts, voor het eerst op een rij gezet hoeveel negatieve emissies tegen welke kosten in Nederland gerealiseerd kunnen worden. Een eerste schatting van het technisch potentieel komt uit op ongeveer 150 Mton CO2 per jaar, maar het is vrijwel zeker dat de hoeveelheid biomassa...

In december 2015 hebben bijna alle landen ter wereld zich in het Parijsakkoord ten doel gesteld om de mondiale temperatuurstijging te beperken tot 2°C en, indien mogelijk, tot 1,5°C. Om hieraan te voldoen zijn negatieve emissies - maatregelen waarmee netto CO2 aan de atmosfeer wordt onttrokken - vrijwel onvermijdelijk. In deze achtergrondstudie is,...

The carbon balance of the land biosphere is the result of complex interactions between land, atmosphere and oceans, including climatic change, carbon dioxide fertilization and land-use change. While the land biosphere currently absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, this carbon balance might be reversed under climate and land-use change ('carb...

This study, commissioned by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), offers an assessment of the effect of bioenergy on greenhouse gas emissions. It combines estimates of supply-chain emissions from liquid and solid biofuels and direct and indirect land-use-change emissions with different bioenergy pathways: for transport fuel, electricit...

In the Spring of 2012, PBL, in collaboration with other researchers from the Netherlands and Australia, conducted a detailed survey about climate science. More than 1800 international scientists studying various aspects of climate change, including e.g. climate physics, climate impacts and mitigation, responded to the questionnaire. Certain results...

The Climate Dialogue weblog has been a climate change communication project, following a request by the Dutch Parliament, which asked the Dutch Government ‘to also involve climate sceptics in future studies on climate change’. Climate Dialogue was set up by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), the Netherlands Environmental Assessm...

Results are presented from a survey held among 1868 scientists studying various aspects of climate change, including physical climate, climate impacts and mitigation. The survey was unique in its size, broadness and level of detail. Consistent with other research, we found that, as the level of expertise in climate science grew, so too did the leve...

In the past three decades, the land biosphere has reduced anthropogenic climate change by sequestering about 2Pg yr-1 of carbon annually that would have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations otherwise. In order to define future reduction targets of CO2 it is important to understand this balance. Global warming and land-use chang...

Er is veel discussie over klimaatverandering, zowel in de wetenschap als in het publieke domein. Een belangrijk verschil is dat er in het publieke domein regelmatig vragen aan de orde komen die in het wetenschappelijke domein nauwelijks meer een issue zijn. Dit zijn veelal meer algemene issues zoals de vraag of de aarde echt wel opwarmt en of de me...

There are several reasons to strengthen the cooperation between the integrated assessment (IA) and earth system (ES) modeling teams in order to better understand the joint development of environmental and human systems. This cooperation can take many different forms, ranging from information exchange between research communities to fully coupled mo...

The project Land-Use and Climate, Identification of Robust Impacts (LUCID) was conceived to address the robustness of biogeophysical impacts of historical land use-land cover change (LULCC). LUCID used seven atmosphere-land models with a common experimental design to explore those impacts of LULCC that are robust and consistent across the climate m...

Ecosystem responses to a changing climate and human-induced climate forcings (e.g. deforestation) might amplify (positive feedback) or dampen (negative feedback) the initial climate response. Feedbacks may include the biogeochemical (e.g. carbon cycle) and biogeophysical feedbacks (e.g. albedo and hydrological cycle). Here, we first review the most...

Wetenschapsjournalist Marcel Crok bracht in november 2010 het boek ‘De staat van het klimaat – een koele blik op een verhit debat’ uit. Het is een kritisch verhaal over het functioneren van het Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) en de stand van de kennis van het klimaatsysteem. De auteur heeft de kritiek op de bevindingen in het klima...

This study describes the coupling of the dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM), Lund–Potsdam–Jena Model for managed land (LPJmL), with the general circulation model (GCM), Simplified Parameterizations primitivE Equation DYnamics model (SPEEDY), to study the feedbacks between land-use change and natural vegetation dynamics and climate during the 20...

We review important advances in our understanding of the global carbon cycle since the publication of the IPCC AR4. We conclude that: the anthropogenic emissions of CO2 due to fossil fuel burning have increased up through 2008 at a rate near to the high end of the IPCC emission scenarios; there are contradictory analyses whether an increase in atmo...

Nederland hoort internationaal tot de 'frontrunners' bij het ontwikkelen van nationaal adaptatiebeleid. Het besef groeit dat voor effectieve adaptatie van het waterbeheer internationale samenwerking en kennisontwikkeling onontbeerlijk is. De Delta Alliance biedt een platform om de kennis in deltagebieden wereldwijd te delen en te versterken. Een kl...

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007) assessed worldwide scientific literature on all aspects of climate change, of the period from 2000 to 2006. The report is intensively used for underpinning international climate policy-making. Since 2006, a large and increasing amount of new literature has appeared, raising the question of whether the IPCC k...

Seven climate models were used to explore the biogeophysical impacts of human-induced land cover change (LCC) at regional and global scales. The imposed LCC led to statistically significant decreases in the northern hemisphere summer latent heat flux in three models, and increases in three models. Five models simulated statistically significant coo...

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

This study quantifies the uncertainty in discharge calculations caused by uncertainty in precipitation input for 294 river basins worldwide. Seven global gridded precipitation datasets are compared at river basin scale in terms of mean annual and seasonal precipitation. The representation of seasonality is similar in all datasets, but the uncertain...

Carbon plantations are introduced in climate change policy as an option to slow the build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. Here we present a methodology to evaluate the potential effectiveness of carbon plantations. The methodology explicitly considers future long-term land-use change around the world and all relevant carbon (...

A methodology is presented to construct supply curves and cost-supply curves for carbon plantations based on land-use scenarios from the Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment (IMAGE 2). A sensitivity analysis for assessing which factors are most important in shaping these curves is also presented. In the IPCC SRES B2 Scenario, the carbo...

IMAGE is an ecological-environmental framework that simulates the environmental consequences of human activities worldwide. It represents interactions between society (including land use), the biosphere and the climate system to assess sustainability issues like climate change, food security and human well-being. Currently the climate-carbon-vegeta...

Changes in land use and the consequent changes in land-cover properties modify the interactions between the land surface and the atmosphere locally and regionally (Kabat et al., 2004). Important factors in these interactions are the biochemical fluxes of CO2 and other trace gases, and the biophysical fluxes of energy and water vapor. Modeling studi...

On the basis of the IPCC B2, A1b and B1 baseline scenarios, mitigation scenarios were developed that stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at 650, 550 and 450 and – subject to specific assumptions – 400ppm CO2-eq. The analysis takes into account a large number of reduction options, such as reductions of non-CO2 gases, carbon plantations and measu...

We explored the climate impacts for two land-use change scenarios, aimed at mitigating the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Using the integrated assessment model IMAGE 2.2, we found that the large-scale implementation in the extratropics of either carbon-sequestration or modern-biomass plantations decreases the CO2 concentration with...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) developed a new series of emission scenarios (SRES). Six global models were used to develop SRES but most focused primarily on energy and industry related emissions. Land-use emissions were only covered by three models, where IMAGE included the most detailed, spatially explicit description of glo...

The IPCC SRES narratives were implemented in IMAGE 2.2 to evaluate the future con- dition of the climate system (including the biosphere). A series of scenario experiments was used to assess possible ranges in emissions and concentrations of greenhouse gases, climate change and impacts. These experiments focussed on the role of the terrestrial carb...

In this paper, a system dynamics model is described, which simulates long-term trends in the production and consumption of metals (i.e. iron/steel and an aggregate of metals of medium abundance) in relation to impacts such as ore-grade decline, capital and energy requirements and waste flows. This metal model can be of assistance in exploring the i...

Global catastrophe does not appear to be imminent. However, the projections presented in this book indicate the risks and uncertainties associated with perpetuating current trends, as presented in many official reports and plans. Is seems unlikely that, on current trends, teh route to sustainable development as pictured in Agenda 21 will be chosen....

When tackling a subject as complex as global change and sustainable development, it is essential to be able to 'frame teh issues'. This was one of the main reasons for developing the TARGETS model, an integrated model of the global system, consisting of metamodels of important subsystems. In this chapter we introduce TARGETS. Building on the previo...

This report presents estimates of the costs of abatement of greenhouse gas emissions associated with landfills as a source of methane (CH4), sewage as a source of methane and nitrous oxide (CH4 and N2O, respectively) and carbon (C) sequestration in forest plantations. This is done in the form of so-called Marginal Abatement Cost (MAC) curves. The p...

The economic assessment of priorities for a European environmental policy plan focuses on twelve identified Prominent European Environmental Problems such as climate change, chemical risks and biodiversity. The study, commissioned by the European Commission (DG Environment) to a European consortium led by RIVM, provides a basis for priority setting...

During the second Advisory Board Meeting on IMAGE 2.0 (Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment) which took place in june 1994, it was discussed to improve the Agricultural Economy Model (AEM) by adopting a 'simple equilibrium relation between supply and demand'. This resulted in a new version in IMAGE 2.1. In this version, the AEM is part...

In this report, a system dynamics model is described, which simulates long-term trends in the production and consumption of metals (i.e. iron/steel and an aggregate of metals of medium abundance) in relation to impacts such as ore-grade decline, capital and energy requirements and waste flows. This metal model can be of assistance in exploring the...

Advanced textbook that examines recent developments in regional climatology and global climates.