General Information

MAGICC (Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change) is a set of coupled gas-cycle, climate and ice-melt models that allows the user to determine the global-mean temperature and sea-level consequences of user-specified greenhouse gas and sulphur dioxide emissions. MAGICC is designed for two main purposes:

The models used by MAGICC were developed in the Climatic Research Unit and at NCAR over a number of years primarily by Tom Wigley and Sarah Raper. These models are written and executed in FORTRAN. SCENGEN is based on a scaling algorithm devised by Tom Wigley and Ben Santer. It, too, is coded in FORTRAN, with the software completely revised and rewritten by Tom Wigley for the current version. The MAGICC and SCENGEN shells (GUIs) were designed and written in Tcl/Tk by Mike Salmon and Seth McGinnis, with assistance from Tom Wigley and Mike Hulme. The current version of MAGICC/SCENGEN (Version 4.1; Sept. 2003) replaces all previous versions. The shell has been redesigned as a Windows application. All the component models that make up MAGICC and the default parameter values are those used by the IPCC in their Third Assessment Report.

Funding:

MAGICC, and the models used by MAGICC, have been funded from a number of sources over the years. These include the US Department of Energy, the UK Department of the Environment (now DEFRA), the US National Science Foundation, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and DG-Research of the Commission of the European Union. Most of the recent development of SCENGEN was funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency through a contract with Stratus Consulting, Boulder, CO.

Help:

Within MAGICC you will be able to find information about the various menu options by clicking on the Help buttons. This will display a brief description of the options available to the user and the consequence of each selection. More detailed information about MAGICC will be found in the User and Technical Manuals.

Licence:

MAGICC can only be used under licence. All users must be registered by completing a Licence Agreement. A copy of this Agreement (LICENCE.DOC) is given at the end of the User Manual, or can be found in the SCEN-41/MAGICC subdirectory. Details of the MAGICC/SCENGEN directory structure can be found at the end of the Technical Manual. Please print the Licence, read it, sign it, copy it and return it to Tom Wigley, NCAR, P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307, USA, [wigley@ucar.edu ; fax 303 497 1333].