Image is an ecological-environmental model framework that simulates the environmental impact of human activities worldwide. It models the interactions between society, the biosphere and the climate system to evaluate sustainability issues such as climate change, biodiversity and quality of life. The IMAGE model (version 3.0, 2014) aims to explore the long-term dynamics and effects of global change resulting from the interaction between demographic, technological, economic, social, cultural and political factors.
IMAGE 3.0
Image runs result in grid-level data with resolution of 30 by 30 arcminutes and 5 by 5 arcminutes for physical processes and in data at regional level with 26 regions for socio-economic data. Since version 3.0, the grid data is published in netcdf format via the KNMI data portal (KDC). This dataset is a grid dataset.
The IMAGE indicators at grid level
Eleven indicators are available: Annual precipitation, annual temperature, dryness index, biomass, fraction of land cover type, fraction of land cover type detailed, land cover, monthly rainfall, monthly temperature, net primary production (NPP) and population density. For each indicator, there is a data file per scenario. These data files can be viewed and downloaded.
The SSP scenarios
The first IMAGE 3.0 results are the SSP scenarios of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways — SSP project. These are documented in the article: Energy, land-use and greenhouse gas emissions trajectories under a green growth paradigm. The data of the following scenarios are available via the KNMI portal: baseline (SSP2) and mitigation scenarios (SSP2_SPA0_RCP_1.9, SSP2_SPA2_RCP_2.6, SSP2_SPA2_RCP_3.4, SSP2_SPA2_RCP_4.5, SSP2_SPA2_RCP_6.0). SPA2 stands for fragmented and postponed policies, SPA0 stands for global uniform policy without delay, RCP stands for Representative Concentration Pathways. The results for the SSP1, SSP3, SSP4 and SSP5 scenarios are available on request. To do this, please contact the IMAGE team:
[email protected]
Indicator — Annual temperature (30 arcmin)
This indicator shows the global annual surface temperature for each country cell for the period 1970 to 2100 in increments of 5 years. Below you can download the entire indicator dataset as TAR file (in NetCDF 4.0 format) or per scenario as separate files (in.nc format).
The data is available under CC-BY license. The IMAGE team would like to be involved in projects that use the data.