A solution to the misrepresentations of CO2-equivalent emissions of short-lived climate pollutants under ambitious mitigation

npj Climate and Atmospheric Science

Volumn 1, Issue 1, 2018, Pages

  Allen, Myles R ^a,b   Shine, Keith P ^c   Fuglestvedt, Jan S ^d   Millar, Richard J ^a   Cain, Michelle ^a   Frame, David J ^e   Macey, Adrian H ^e  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

^c UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

^d CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH OSLO CICERO   (Norway)

^e VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON   (New Zealand)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AIR TEMPERATURE; ATMOSPHERIC POLLUTION; CARBON DIOXIDE; CARBON EMISSION; GLOBAL WARMING; POLLUTION CONTROL; RADIATIVE FORCING;

EID: 85075091510     PISSN: None     EISSN: 23973722     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1038/s41612-018-0026-8     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. Rogelj, J. et al. Paris agreement climate proposals need a boost to keep warming well below 2 °C. Nature 534, 631–639 (2016).
2. Ocko, I. B. et al. Unmask temporal trade-offs in climate policy debates. Science 356, 492–493 (2017).
3. Allen, M. R. et al. A new use of Global Warming potentials to compare cumulative and short-lived climate pollutants. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 773–776 (2016).
4. Shine, K., Fuglestvedt, J., Hailemariam, K. & Stuber, N. Alternatives to the global warming potential for comparing climate impacts of emissions of greenhouse gases. Clim. Change 68, 281–302 (2005).
5. Lauder, A. R. et al. Offsetting methane emissions—an alternative to emission equivalence metrics. Int. J. Greenh. Gas Control 12, 419–429 (2013).
6. Shindell, D. et al. Simultaneously mitigating near-term climate change and improving human health and food security. Science 335, 183–189 (2012).
7. Shine, K. P., Berntsen, T. K., Fuglestvedt, J. S., Skeie, R. B. & Stuber, N. Comparing the climatic effects of emissions of short- and long-lived climate agents. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A. 365, 1903–1914 (2007).
8. Fawcett, A. A. et al. Can Paris pledges avert severe climate change? Science 350, 1168–1169 (2015).
9. Skeie, R. B. et al. Perspective has a strong effect on the calculation of historical contributions to global warming. Environ. Res. Lett. 12, 024022 (2017).
10. Clark, L. et al. Assessing transformation pathways. in Edenhofer, O. et al (eds.) Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change, Contribution of IPCC Working Group III to AR5 (eds, Edenhofer, O. et al) (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014).
11. Krey, V. et al. Annex 2—metrics and methodology. in Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of IPCC Working Group III to AR5 (eds, Edenhofer, O. et al) (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014).
12. Meinshausen, M., Raper, S. C. B. & Wigley, T. M. L. Emulating coupled atmosphere-ocean and carbon cycle models with a simpler model, MAGICC6—part 1: model description and calibration. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 11, 1417–1456 (2011).
13. Kriegler, E. et al. Making or breaking climate targets: The AMPERE study on staged accession scenarios for climate policy. Technol. Forecast. Social Change 90A, 24–44 (2015).
14. Myhre, G. et al. Anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing. in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. & Qin, D. et al.) Ch. 8 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013).
15. Pierrehumbert, R. T. Short-lived climate pollution. Ann. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 42, 341–379 (2014).
16. Smith, S. M. et al. Equivalence of greenhouse-gas emissions for peak temperature limits. Nat. Clim. Change 2, 535–538 (2012).
17. Reisinger, A., Havlik, P., Riahi, K. & Herrero, M. Implications of alternative metrics for global mitigation costs and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Clim. Change 117, 677–690 (2013).
18. Fuglestvedt, J. S. et al. Implications of possible interpretations of “greenhouse gas balance” in the Paris agreement. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A. 10.1098/rsta.2016.0445 (2018).
19. Zickfeld, K., Eby, M., Matthews, H. D. & Weaver, A. J. Setting cumulative emissions targets to reduce the risk of dangerous climate change. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 106, 16129–16134 (2009).
20. 4 and climate implications. Geophys. Res. Lett. 25, 2285–2288 (1998).
21. Tanaka, K. et al. Evaluating Global Warming potentials with historical temperature. Clim. Change 96, 443–466 (2009).
22. Manning, M. & Reisinger, A. Broader perspectives for comparing different greenhouse gases. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A 369, 1891–1905 (2011).
23. Meinshausen, M. et al. The RCP greenhouse gas concentrations and their extension from 1765 to 2300. Clim. Change 109, 213 (2011).
24. Reisinger, A. M., Meinshausen, M. & Manning, M. Future changes in Global Warming potentials under representative concentration pathways. Environ. Res. Lett. 6, 024020 (2011).
25. Sterner, A. O. & Johansson, D. J. A. Effects of climate-carbon feedbacks on emission metrics. Environ. Res. Lett. 12, 034019 (2017).
26. UNFCCC, Adoption of the Paris Agreement, FCCC/CP/2015/10/Add.1, Article 4.13: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/10a01.pdf (2015).
27. 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).
28. Gillett, N. P., Arora, V. K., Matthews, D. & Allen, M. R. Constraining the ratio of global warming to cumulative CO2 emissions using CMIP5 simulations. J. Clim. 26, 6844–6858 (2013).
29. Allen, M. R. et al. Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne. Nature 458, 1163–1166 (2009).
30. Bowerman, N. H. A. et al. The role of short-lived climate pollutants in meeting temperature goals. Nat. Clim. Change 3, 1021–1024 (2013).
31. Shindell, D. et al. A climate policy pathway for near- and long-term benefits. Science 356, 493–494 (2017).
32. IAMC AR5 Scenario Database: https://secure.iiasa.ac.at/web-apps/ene/AR5DB (2014).
33. Millar, R. J., Nicholls, Z. R., Friedlingstein, P. & Allen, M. R. A modified impulse-response representation of the global near-surface air temperature and atmospheric concentration response to carbon dioxide emissions. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 17, 7213–7228 (2017).
34. Gillett, N. P. & Matthews, H. D. Accounting for carbon cycle feedbacks in a comparison of the global warming effects of greenhouse gases. Environ. Res. Lett. 5, 034011 (2010).
35. Gasser, T. et al. Accounting for the climate-carbon feedback in emission metrics. Earth Syst. Dynam. 8, 235–253 (2017).
36. Berntsen, T. K. et al. Response of climate to regional emissions of ozone precursors: sensitivities and warming potentials. Tellus B 57, 283–304 (2005).
37. Ricke, K. L. & Caldeira, K. Maximum warming occurs about one decade after a carbon dioxide emission. Environ. Res. Lett. 9, 124002 (2014).
38. Gregory, J. M. & Forster, P. M. Transient climate response estimated from radiative forcing and observedclimate change. J. Geophys. Res. 113, D23105 (2008).
39. Collins, M. et al. Long-termclimate change: projections, commitment and irreversibility. in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. & Qin, D. et al.) Ch. 8 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013).
40. 2. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A 373, 20140417 (2015).
41. Millar, R., Allen, M. R., Rogelj, J. & Friedlingstein, P. The cumulative carbon budget and its implications. Oxf. Rev. Econ. Policy 32, 323–342 (2016).
42. Tokarska, K. B., Gillett, N. P., Weaver, A. J., Arora, V. K. & Eby, M. The climate response to 5 trillion tonnes of carbon. Nat. Clim. Change 5, 851–855 (2016).
43. Shindell, D. Inhomogeneous forcing and transient climate sensitivity. Nat. Clim. Change 4, 274–277 (2014).
44. 2-forcing-equivalent emissions, Geophys. Res. Lett. 10.1002/2017GL076173 (2018).