The range of possibilities for future climate evolution needs to be taken into account when planning climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. This requires ensembles of multi-decadal simulations to assess both chaotic climate variability and model response uncertainty. Statistical estimates of model response uncertainty, based on observations of recent climate change, admit climate sensitivities--defined as the equilibrium response of global mean temperature to doubling levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide--substantially greater than 5 K. But such strong responses are not used in ranges for future climate change because they have not been seen in general circulation models. Here we present results from the 'climateprediction.net' experiment, the first multi-thousand-member grand ensemble of simulations using a general circulation model and thereby explicitly resolving regional details. We find model versions as realistic as other state-of-the-art climate models but with climate sensitivities ranging from less than 2 K to more than 11 K. Models with such extreme sensitivities are critical for the study of the full range of possible responses of the climate system to rising greenhouse gas levels, and for assessing the risks associated with specific targets for stabilizing these levels.

Smart grid (SG) networks are newly upgraded networks of connected objects that greatly improve reliability, efficiency and sustainability of the traditional energy infrastructure. In this respect, the smart metering infrastructure (SMI) plays an important role in controlling, monitoring and managing multiple domains in the SG. Despite the salient features of SMI, security and privacy issues have been under debate because of the large number of heterogeneous devices that are anticipated to be coordinated through public communication networks. This survey paper shows a brief overview of real cyber attack incidents in traditional energy networks and those targeting the smart metering network. Specifically, we present a threat taxonomy considering: (i) threats in system-level security, (ii) threats and/or theft of services, and (iii) threats to privacy. Based on the presented threats, we derive a set of security and privacy requirements for SG metering networks. Furthermore, we discuss various schemes that have been proposed to address these threats, considering the pros and cons of each. Finally, we investigate the open research issues to shed new light on future research directions in smart grid metering networks.

Smart meters are considered as foundational part of the smart metering infrastructure (SMI) in smart energy networks. Smart meter is a digital device that makes use of twoway communication between consumer and utility to exchange, manage and control energy consumptions within a home. However, despite all the features, a smart meter raises several securityrelated concerns. For instance, how to exchange data between the legal entities (e.g., smart meter and utility server) while maintaining privacy of the consumer. To address these concerns, authentication and key agreement in SMI can provide important security properties that not only to maintain a trust between the legitimate entities but also to satisfy other security services. This work presents a lightweight authentication and key agreement (LAKA) that enables trust, anonymity, integrity and adequate security in the domain of smart energy network. The proposed scheme employs hybrid cryptography to facilitate mutual trust (authentication), dynamic session key, integrity, and anonymity. We justify the feasibility of the proposed scheme with a testbed using 802.15.4 based device (i.e., smart meter). Moreover, through the security and performance analysis, we show that the proposed scheme is more effective and energy efficient compared to the previous schemes.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging paradigm focusing on the inter-connection of things or devices to each other and to the users. This technology is anticipated to become an integral milestone in the development of smart homes and smart cities. For any technology to be successful and achieve widespread use, it needs to gain the trust of users by providing adequate security and privacy assurance. Despite the growing interest of the research community in IoT, and the emergence of several surveys and papers addressing its architecture and its elements, we are still lacking a thorough analysis of the security and privacy properties that are required for a system where the constituent devices vary in their capabilities. In this paper we provide a threat model based on use-cases of IoT, which can be used to determine where efforts should be invested in order to secure these systems. We conclude by recommending measures that will help in providing security and assuring privacy when using IoT.

Security in modern smart metering communications and in smart grid networks has been an area of interest recently. In this field, identity-based mutual authentication including credential privacy without active involvement of a trusted third party is an important building block for smart grid technology. Recently, several schemes have been proposed for the smart grid with various security features (e.g., mutual authentication and key agreement). Moreover, these schemes are said to offer session key security under the widely accepted Canetti-Krawczyk (CK) security model. Instead, we argue that all of them are still vulnerable under the CK model. To remedy the problem, we present a new provably secure key agreement model for smart metering communications. The proposed model preserves the security features and provides more resistance against a denial of service attack. Moreover, our scheme is pairing-free, resulting in highly efficient computational and communication efforts.