---
id: communication/world-climate-simulation
about:
  label: World Climate Simulation
  description: >-
    Role-playing game of UN climate negotiations from Climate Interactive, MIT
    Sloan and UMass Lowell, in which delegates' pledges are tested live in the
    C-ROADS climate model.
  tags:
    - climate negotiations
    - role-play
    - education
    - facilitation
    - system dynamics
    - games
tool:
  form: facilitated role-playing game with free materials and a web simulator
  group: Playing
  homepage: 'https://www.climateinteractive.org/world-climate-simulation/'
  try: 'https://www.climateinteractive.org/world-climate-simulation-resources'
  licence: CC-BY-4.0 (game materials)
  cost: free
open:
  source: unknown
  data: unknown
  api: unknown
  participation: open
  licence: CC-BY-4.0 (game materials)
  note: >-
    The facilitator guide, slides and briefing sheets are under a Creative
    Commons Attribution 4.0 licence; the licence of the C-ROADS model itself is
    not stated on the pages read.
domains:
  - climate
  - people
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: World Climate Simulation (Climate Interactive)
      url: 'https://www.climateinteractive.org/world-climate-simulation/'
    - title: World Climate Simulation Resources (Climate Interactive)
      url: 'https://www.climateinteractive.org/world-climate-simulation-resources'
    - title: World Climate Training (Climate Interactive)
      url: 'https://www.climateinteractive.org/world-climate-training'
    - title: C-ROADS (Climate Interactive)
      url: 'https://www.climateinteractive.org/c-roads'
    - title: The Science Behind Our Simulators (Climate Interactive)
      url: 'https://www.climateinteractive.org/simulators-science'
    - title: >-
        WORLD CLIMATE: A Role-Play Simulation of Climate Negotiations (Sterman
        et al., Simulation & Gaming, 2014; Crossref record with abstract)
      url: 'https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1177/1046878113514935'
    - title: >-
        Combining role-play with interactive simulation to motivate informed
        climate action: Evidence from the World Climate simulation (Rooney-Varga
        et al., PLOS ONE, 2018)
      url: >-
        https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202877
  created: '2026-10-23'
  reviewed: '2026-10-23'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
The World Climate Simulation is a role-play of a United Nations climate summit.[^1] Each participant is a delegate for a nation, a regional group or an interest group, and the delegations negotiate pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions.[^1] A facilitator plays a UN leader and types each round of pledges into C-ROADS, a climate model, which shows the result for warming, greenhouse gas concentrations and sea level to 2100.[^1,4,5] The aim is an agreement that keeps warming well below 2°C.[^1] A session takes 2 to 3 hours, in person or online, for 8 to 50 people, and Climate Interactive says it can be adapted for up to 500.[^1]

It is usually played with six teams or three.[^2] In the six-team version, for 18 to 60 people, one of the delegations is the United States or, as an optional substitute while the federal government is not attending the negotiations, a team for US pro-climate interests.[^2] The three-team version suits 6 to 24 people or very large groups short of time.[^2] Optional teams of climate activists, fossil fuel lobbyists and journalists can be added.[^2] Anyone can run it: the facilitator guide, slides, briefing sheets, proposal form and table cards are free to download under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, with translated versions in the resource library and a free self-paced training plan.[^2,3]

C-ROADS works from the other end of the problem from Climate Interactive's [En-ROADS](/engines/en-roads/). Instead of energy and economic choices, it takes emissions for countries and blocs (China, the US, the EU, India, other developed and other developing nations) and calculates what they do to the climate.[^5] It is a system dynamics model, a set of equations for how stocks such as atmospheric carbon change over time, in use since 2008.[^5] Climate Interactive says it was one of the first models built to add up national pledges, has been used in international negotiations, and was reviewed by a committee chaired by Robert Watson, a former chair of the IPCC.[^5] It was developed by Climate Interactive, the MIT Sloan School of Management, Ventana Systems and the UMass Lowell Climate Change Initiative; the game by the same partners without Ventana.[^1,2,5]

The game has been studied. A 2014 paper in Simulation & Gaming by John Sterman and colleagues sets out how to run it.[^6] A 2018 PLOS ONE study by Juliette Rooney-Varga and colleagues analysed surveys taken before and after playing by more than 2,000 participants in 39 sessions in eight countries.[^7] It found gains in knowledge of climate change, in feelings of urgency and hope, and in wanting to learn and do more.[^7] Gains in urgency, not in knowledge, went with a stronger wish to learn more and intent to act.[^7]

In this game the model is the referee: delegates make pledges to each other, and C-ROADS checks each set against what it does to the temperature.