Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SPARCCLE (Socioeconomic Pathways, Adaptation and Resilience to Changing CLimate in Europe)
Période du rapport: 2023-09-01 au 2025-02-28
The SPARCCLE project will deliver adaptation and mitigation strategies for a just and climate resilient Europe, as well as support policymaking for action on the socioeconomic risks posed by climate change.
By engaging policymakers, public and private sector stakeholders, and scientific experts throughout the project, SPARCCLE aims to generate actionable insights and recommendations for policymakers at all levels – European, national and local, including the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) – as well as for businesses, and civil society, based on state-of-the-art science. This involves iterative activities through the project’s lifetime such as co-design of scenarios, validation of results, and capacity building.
To bridge disciplinary divides, SPARCCLE is establishing new methodological frameworks that connect research communities working on climate impacts and risk in Europe. It combines bottom-up assessments of multidimensional climate vulnerabilities, risks, damages and adaptation with integrated assessment frameworks (IAFs) and leading multi-sectoral macro-economic models.
Throughout this approach, the project will strengthen Europe’s capacity to identify the characteristics of both sectoral and systems-level transformations required for climate-resilient and just development that reduces socioeconomic risks for Europe related to both sudden extreme events and slow onset processes.
The main goals of SPARCCLE are to:
1. Accelerate new probabilistic emulators of climate hazards, damages and risks, incorporating cross-sectoral interactions, spillovers, monetisation of climate impacts.
2. Develop granular socioeconomic projections, including gender and other socioeconomic heterogeneities and multidimensional vulnerabilities informed by empirical assessment.
3. Develop insights on mitigation-adaptation synergies and trade-offs, sectoral risks, and provide region-specific recommendations on short- and long-term climate policy responses, considering energy security and import dependence.
4. Foster co-creation with public and private stakeholders through knowledge transfer, capacity building activities, and open science.
5. Co-design stress-test scenarios that explore socioeconomic climate risks with stakeholders and policymakers, including sectoral stress tests. Stress test scenarios demonstrate and accelerate the application of this established method from the finance community across other sectors.
By engaging policymakers, public and private sector stakeholders, and scientific experts throughout the project, SPARCCLE aims to generate actionable insights and recommendations for policymakers at all levels – European, national and local, including the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) – as well as for businesses, and civil society, based on state-of-the-art science. This involves iterative activities through the project’s lifetime such as co-design of scenarios, validation of results, and capacity building.
To bridge disciplinary divides, SPARCCLE is establishing new methodological frameworks that connect research communities working on climate impacts and risk in Europe. It combines bottom-up assessments of multidimensional climate vulnerabilities, risks, damages and adaptation with integrated assessment frameworks (IAFs) and leading multi-sectoral macro-economic models.
Throughout this approach, the project will strengthen Europe’s capacity to identify the characteristics of both sectoral and systems-level transformations required for climate-resilient and just development that reduces socioeconomic risks for Europe related to both sudden extreme events and slow onset processes.
The main goals of SPARCCLE are to:
1. Accelerate new probabilistic emulators of climate hazards, damages and risks, incorporating cross-sectoral interactions, spillovers, monetisation of climate impacts.
2. Develop granular socioeconomic projections, including gender and other socioeconomic heterogeneities and multidimensional vulnerabilities informed by empirical assessment.
3. Develop insights on mitigation-adaptation synergies and trade-offs, sectoral risks, and provide region-specific recommendations on short- and long-term climate policy responses, considering energy security and import dependence.
4. Foster co-creation with public and private stakeholders through knowledge transfer, capacity building activities, and open science.
5. Co-design stress-test scenarios that explore socioeconomic climate risks with stakeholders and policymakers, including sectoral stress tests. Stress test scenarios demonstrate and accelerate the application of this established method from the finance community across other sectors.
The co-development of stress-test scenarios is a central theme of the project cutting across the five substantive work-packages as an integrative activity exploring plausible yet exceptional changes in risk factors across Europe. At the first stakeholder workshop in December 2024 - complemented by two webinars - key stakeholders from energy, health, finance, and land-use sectors met to co-develop three bold stress-testing scenarios that are being implemented in the modelling framework, (i) Europe under heat stress, (ii) Water – too little, too much, and (iii) Europe in a fragmented world.
Within the work packages, a number of activities have made progress towards improved assessment of socioeconomic risks in Europe, namely:
• Additional climate forcing datasets that can be used by impact models, and extensions of the MESMER climate model emulator to probabilistic samples of precipitation extremes.
• Progress on the development of spatially explicit population projections to NUTS2 regions disaggregated by age and gender based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways.
• Global empirical assessment of fatalities and economic damages from droughts, floods and heatwaves that is being used to train machine-learning models using climate and multi- socioeconomic data to characterise changing vulnerability in the future.
• Several scientific papers published or in review as preprints, on topics including burned areas and wildfire damages under climate change and socioeconomic development, risks of tropical cyclones on ecosystems, inequality of climate impacts on within country income distributions. and gender inequality in global scenarios.
Researchers from the project co-organised and participated in a week-long Adaptation Pathways workshop in February 2025, that brought together around 40 adaptation experts. A key outcome of this was the co-development of sectoral adaptation pathways (coastal, agriculture, water and health), with the intention of feeding into the forthcoming 7th Assessment report cycle for WGII.
Within the work packages, a number of activities have made progress towards improved assessment of socioeconomic risks in Europe, namely:
• Additional climate forcing datasets that can be used by impact models, and extensions of the MESMER climate model emulator to probabilistic samples of precipitation extremes.
• Progress on the development of spatially explicit population projections to NUTS2 regions disaggregated by age and gender based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways.
• Global empirical assessment of fatalities and economic damages from droughts, floods and heatwaves that is being used to train machine-learning models using climate and multi- socioeconomic data to characterise changing vulnerability in the future.
• Several scientific papers published or in review as preprints, on topics including burned areas and wildfire damages under climate change and socioeconomic development, risks of tropical cyclones on ecosystems, inequality of climate impacts on within country income distributions. and gender inequality in global scenarios.
Researchers from the project co-organised and participated in a week-long Adaptation Pathways workshop in February 2025, that brought together around 40 adaptation experts. A key outcome of this was the co-development of sectoral adaptation pathways (coastal, agriculture, water and health), with the intention of feeding into the forthcoming 7th Assessment report cycle for WGII.
SPARCCLE has made strides in advancing climate risk assessment through the development of MESMER, an open-source emulator for probabilistic climate extremes, which integrates with the CLIMADA platform to assess economic damages. The project enhances spatial resolution in socioeconomic vulnerability mapping, with data down to the NUTS-2/3 level, including gender-disaggregated labour force data and projections of age-structured populations. It pioneers the use of machine learning and Earth observation data to estimate dynamic vulnerabilities globally, particularly to hydro-climatic extremes.
Key innovations include integrating socioeconomic and biophysical data into stress-test scenarios co-designed with stakeholders. These scenarios capture diverse climate risks such as heat stress, water scarcity, and geopolitical fragmentation. SPARCCLE’s approach supports decision-makers through tools like the SPARCCLE-Explorer and EU Scoreboard, which are being designed to offer actionable insights for diverse user groups.
Substantial work on understanding macroeconomic climate damages is underway, including development of new sectoral damage functions, and the integration of damage functions in integrated assessment models.
To ensure continued uptake, further model development, stakeholder engagement, and demonstration efforts are needed. The open science strategy - including public GitHub repositories, Zenodo archives, and policy-relevant visualisation tools - sets a foundation for long-term exploitation and regulatory relevance.
Key innovations include integrating socioeconomic and biophysical data into stress-test scenarios co-designed with stakeholders. These scenarios capture diverse climate risks such as heat stress, water scarcity, and geopolitical fragmentation. SPARCCLE’s approach supports decision-makers through tools like the SPARCCLE-Explorer and EU Scoreboard, which are being designed to offer actionable insights for diverse user groups.
Substantial work on understanding macroeconomic climate damages is underway, including development of new sectoral damage functions, and the integration of damage functions in integrated assessment models.
To ensure continued uptake, further model development, stakeholder engagement, and demonstration efforts are needed. The open science strategy - including public GitHub repositories, Zenodo archives, and policy-relevant visualisation tools - sets a foundation for long-term exploitation and regulatory relevance.