Cumulative carbon emissions budgets consistent with 1.5 °C global warming (original) (raw)

Nature Climate Change volume 8, pages 296–299 (2018) Cite this article

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The Paris Agreement[1](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR1 " Adoption of the Paris Agreement FCCC/CP/2015/L.9/Rev.1 (UNFCCC, 2015); https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf

            .") commits ratifying parties to pursue efforts to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 °C relative to pre-industrial levels. Carbon budgets[2](#ref-CR2 "IPCC Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) 1029–1136 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013)."),[3](#ref-CR3 "Allen, M. R. et al. Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne. Nature 458, 1163–1166 (2009)."),[4](#ref-CR4 "Matthews, H. D., Gillett, N. P., Stott, P. A. & Zickfeld, K. The proportionality of global warming to cumulative carbon emissions. Nature 459, 829–832 (2009)."),[5](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR5 "Zickfeld, K. et al. Setting cumulative emissions targets to reduce the risk of dangerous climate change. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 106, 16129–16134 (2009).") consistent with remaining below 1.5 °C warming, reported in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)[2](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR2 "IPCC Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) 1029–1136 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013)."),[6](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR6 "Rogelj, J. et al. Differences between carbon budget estimates unravelled. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 245–252 (2016)."),[8](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR8 "IPCC Summary for Policymakers. In Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013)."), are directly based on Earth system model (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5)[7](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR7 "Taylor, K. E., Stouffer, R. J. & Meehl, G. An overview of CMIP5 and the experiment design. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 93, 485–498 (2012).") responses, which, on average, warm more than observations in response to historical CO2 emissions and other forcings[8](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR8 "IPCC Summary for Policymakers. In Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013)."),[9](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR9 "Millar, R. J. et al. Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C. Nat. Geosci. 10, 741–747 (2017)."). These models indicate a median remaining budget of 55 PgC (ref. [10](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR10 "IPCC Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report (eds Pachauri R. K. & Meyer L. A.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014)."), base period: year 1870) left to emit from January 2016, the equivalent to approximately five years of emissions at the 2015 rate[11](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR11 "Le Quéré, C. et al. Global carbon budget 2015. Earth Syst. Sci. Data 7, 349–396 (2015)."),[12](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR12 "Le Quéré, C. et al. Global carbon budget 2013. Earth Syst. Sci. Data 6, 235–263 (2014)."). Here we calculate warming and carbon budgets relative to the decade 2006–2015, which eliminates model–observation differences in the climate–carbon response over the historical period[9](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR9 "Millar, R. J. et al. Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C. Nat. Geosci. 10, 741–747 (2017)."), and increases the median remaining carbon budget to 208 PgC (33–66% range of 130–255 PgC) from January 2016 (with mean warming of 0.89 °C for 2006–2015 relative to 1861–1880[13](#ref-CR13 "Morice, C. P., Kennedy, J. J., Rayner, N. A. & Jones, P. D. Quantifying uncertainties in global and regional temperature change using an ensemble of observational estimates: The HadCRUT4 data set. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos. 117, 1–22 (2012)."),[14](#ref-CR14 "Vose, R. S. et al. NOAA’s merged land-ocean surface temperature analysis. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 93, 1677–1685 (2012)."),[15](#ref-CR15 "GISTEMP Team GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2018); 
              http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
              
            ."),[16](#ref-CR16 "Hansen, J., Ruedy, R., Sato, M. & Lo, K. Global surface temperature change. Rev. Geophys. 48, RG4004 (2010)."),[17](#ref-CR17 "Cowtan, K. & Way, R. G. Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends. Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc. 140, 1935–1944 (2014)."),[18](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR18 "Rohde, R. et al. A new estimate of the average earth surface land temperature spanning 1753 to 2011. Geoinform. Geostat. Overview 1, 
              https://doi.org/10.4172/2327-4581.1000101
              
             (2013).")). There is little sensitivity to the observational data set used to infer warming that has occurred, and no significant dependence on the choice of emissions scenario. Thus, although limiting median projected global warming to below 1.5 °C is undoubtedly challenging[19](#ref-CR19 "Rogelj, J. et al. Energy system transformations for limiting end-of-century warming to below 1.5 °C. Nat. Clim. Change 5, 519–528 (2015)."),[20](#ref-CR20 "Sanderson, B. M., O’Neill, B. & Tebaldi, C. What would it take to achieve the Paris temperature targets? Geophys. Res. Lett. 43, 7133–7142 (2016)."),[21](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR21 "Schleussner, C.-F. et al. Science and policy characteristics of the Paris Agreement temperature goal. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 827–835 (2016)."), our results indicate it is not impossible, as might be inferred from the IPCC AR5 carbon budgets[2](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR2 "IPCC Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) 1029–1136 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013)."),[8](/articles/s41558-018-0118-9#ref-CR8 "IPCC Summary for Policymakers. In Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).").

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Fig. 1: Time series of global mean temperature and cumulative carbon emissions for RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios.

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Fig. 2: Cumulative total carbon budgets consistent with 1.5 °C warming (for RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios) as a function of simulated cumulative fossil fuel carbon emissions at present warming.

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Fig. 3: Cumulative frequency distribution of carbon budgets consistent with staying below 1.5 °C global warming.

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Fig. 4: Cumulative frequency distribution of carbon budgets consistent with staying below 1.5 °C global warming based on all CMIP5 models considered here for two different base periods and five different observational data sets.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank M. Berkley for assistance with data acquisition, V. K. Arora and V. Kharin for providing comments on the initial version of the manuscript, and M. Eby, A. P. Schurer and A. R. Friedman for helpful discussions. The authors acknowledge support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant Program and the UK Natural Environment Research Council SMURPHS project (grant no. NE/N006143/1). The authors acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP the US Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. The authors acknowledge Met Office Hadley Centre for providing observational HadCRUT4 data sets, K. Cowtan and R. Way for the filled-in HadCRUT4 data set, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature data set, NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD for providing the NASA(GISS/GISTEMP and NOAAGlobalTemp) global surface temperature data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
    Katarzyna B. Tokarska
  2. School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
    Katarzyna B. Tokarska
  3. Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Environment and Climate Change Canada, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
    Nathan P. Gillett

Authors

  1. Katarzyna B. Tokarska
  2. Nathan P. Gillett

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N.P.G. designed the study. K.B.T. collected and analysed data. K.B.T. and N.P.G. interpreted the data and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence toKatarzyna B. Tokarska.

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Tokarska, K.B., Gillett, N.P. Cumulative carbon emissions budgets consistent with 1.5 °C global warming.Nature Clim Change 8, 296–299 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0118-9

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