Climate-economic models overrepresented in policy assessments
The main task of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to provide comprehensive assessments of climate science, including climate policy options, holistically and objectively. We analyse the sources of all climate policy-related statements in the IPCC reports and Summaries for Policymakers since 1990 to investigate the influence of Integrated Assessment Models, a particular type of climate-economic model. We show that although both reports and SPM are broad and diverse, IAMs are strongly overrepresented in the evidence presented: IAMs are cited at least 10 times more often in the reports than their share of the scientific climate policy literature, and 20 times for often in the politically influential Summaries for Policymakers. The article can be read for free here, and is summarised in a Research Highlight .