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| Titel |
Cumulative carbon as a policy framework for avoiding dangerous climate impacts |
| VerfasserIn |
H. Damon Matthews, Susan Solomon, Raymond Pierrehumbert |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2011
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 13 (2011) |
| Datensatznummer |
250048946
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The primary objective of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is
to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations a level that will avoid dangerous climate impacts.
However, greenhouse gas concentration stabilization is an awkward framework within which
to assess dangerous climate change on account of the significant lag between a given
concentration level, and the eventual equilibrium temperature change. By contrast, recent
research has shown that global temperature change can be well described by a given
cumulative carbon emissions budget. Here, we propose that cumulative carbon emissions
represent an alternate framework that is applicable both as a tool for climate mitigation as
well as for the assessment of potential climate impacts. We show first that both
atmospheric CO2 concentration at a given year and the associated temperature change
are generally associated with a unique cumulative carbon emissions budget that is
largely independent of the emissions scenario. The rate of global temperature change
can therefore be related to first order to the rate of increase of cumulative carbon
emissions. However, transient warming over the next century will also be strongly
affected by emissions of shorter lived forcing agents such as aerosols and methane.
Non-CO2 emissions therefore contribute to uncertainty in the cumulative carbon
budget associated with near-term temperature targets, and may suggest the need
for a two-basket mitigation approach. By contrast, long-term temperature change
remains primarily associated with total cumulative carbon emissions due to the much
longer atmospheric lifetime of CO2 relative to other major climate forcing agents. |
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