Abstract. Robust appraisals of climate impacts at different levels of global-mean temperature increase are vital to guide assessments of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The 2015 Paris Agreement includes a two-headed temperature goal: "holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 • C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 • C". Despite the prominence of these two temperature limits, a comprehensive overview of the differences in climate impacts at these levels is still missing. Here we provide an assessment of key impacts of climate change at warming levels of 1.5 • C and 2 • C, including extreme weather events, water availability, agricultural yields, sea-level rise and risk of coral reef loss. Our results reveal substantial differences in impacts between a 1.5 • C and 2 • C warming that are highly relevant for the assessment of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. For heat-related extremes, the additional 0.5 • C increase in global-mean temperature marks the difference between events at the upper limit of present-day natural variability and a new climate regime, particularly in tropical regions. Similarly, this warming difference is likely to be decisive for the future of tropical coral reefs. In a scenario with an end-of-century warming of 2 • C, virtually all tropical coral reefs are projected to be at risk of severe degradation due to temperature-induced bleaching from 2050 onwards. This fraction is reduced to about 90 % in 2050 and projected to decline to 70 % by 2100 for a 1.5 • C scenario. Analyses of precipitation-related impacts reveal distinct regional differences and hot-spots of change emerge. Regional reduction in median water availability for the Mediterranean is found to nearly double from 9 % to 17 % between 1.5 • C and 2 • C, and the projected lengthening of regional dry spells increases from 7 to 11 %. Projections for agricultural yields differ between crop types as well as world regions. While some (in particular high-latitude) regions may benefit, tropical regions like West Africa, South-East Asia, as well as Central and northern South America are projected to face substantial local yield reductions, particularly for wheat and maize. Best estimate sea-level rise projections based on two illustrative scenarios indicate a 50 cm rise by 2100 relative to year 2000-levels for a 2 • C scenario, and about 10 cm lower levels for a 1.5 • C scenario. In a 1.5 • C scenario, the rate of sea-level rise in 2100 would be reduced by about 30 % compared to a 2 • C scenario. Our findings highlight the importance of regional differentiation to assess both future climate risks and different vulnerabilities to incremental increases in globalmean temperature. The article provides a consistent and comprehensive assessment of existing projections andPublished by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 328C.-F. Schleussner et al.: Climate impacts at 1.5 • C a...

Abstract. Robust appraisals of climate impacts at different levels of global-mean temperature increase are vital to guide assessments of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Currently, two such levels are discussed in the context of the international climate negotiations as long-term global temperature goals: a below 2 °C and a 1.5 °C limit in global-mean temperature rise above pre-industrial levels. Despite the prominence of these two temperature limits, a comprehensive assessment of the differences in climate impacts at these levels is still missing. Here we provide an assessment of key impacts of climate change at warming levels of 1.5 °C and 2 °C, including extreme weather events, water availability, agricultural yields, sea-level rise and risk of coral reef loss. Our results reveal substantial differences in impacts between 1.5 °C and 2 °C. For heat-related extremes, the additional 0.5 °C increase in global-mean temperature marks the difference between events at the upper limit of present-day natural variability and a new climate regime, particularly in tropical regions. Similarly, this warming difference is likely to be decisive for the future of tropical coral reefs. In a scenario with an end-of-century warming of 2 °C, virtually all tropical coral reefs are projected to be at risk of severe degradation due to temperature induced bleaching from 2050 onwards. This fraction is reduced to about 90 % in 2050 and projected to decline to 70 % by 2100 for a 1.5 °C scenario. Analyses of precipitation-related impacts reveal distinct regional differences and several hot-spots of change emerge. Regional reduction in median water availability for the Mediterranean is found to nearly double from 9 to 17 % between 1.5 °C and 2 °C, and the projected lengthening of regional dry spells increases from 7 % longer to 11 %. Projections for agricultural yields differ between crop types as well as world regions. While some (in particular high-latitude) regions may benefit, tropical regions like West Africa, South-East Asia, as well as Central and Northern South America are projected to face local yield reductions, particularly for wheat and maize. Best estimate sea-level rise projections based on two illustrative scenarios indicate a 50 cm rise by 2100 relative to year 2000-levels under a 2 °C warming, which is about 10 cm lower for a 1.5 °C scenario. Our findings highlight the importance of regional differentiation to assess future climate risks as well as different vulnerabilities to incremental increases in global-mean temperature. The article provides a consistent and comprehensive assessment of existing projections and a solid foundation for future work on refining our understanding of warming-level dependent climate impacts.

The climate change agenda is populated by actors and agencies with different objectives, values, and motivations, yet many seek decision scale climate information to inform policy and adaptation responses. A central element of this network of activity is the climate information website (CIW) that has seen a rapid and organic growth, yet with variable content and quality, and unfettered by any code of practice. This builds an ethical–epistemic dilemma that warrants assessment as the presence of CIWs contribute to real‐world consequences and commitment. This study considers the context of CIW growth, and reviews a representative sample of CIWs to draw out key issues for consideration in CIW development. We assess content, function, and use‐case value through a dual approach of a typology and user experience narratives to evaluate the general efficacy of a CIW. The typology reveals strong contrasts in content, complicated interfaces, and an overload of choice making it difficult to converge on a stable outcome. The narratives capture user experience and highlight barriers that include navigation difficulties, jargon laden content, minimal or opaque guidance, and inferred information without context about uncertainty and limits to skill. This illuminates four concerns: (1) the ethics of information provision in a context of real‐world consequences; (2) interfaces that present barriers to achieving robust solutions; (3) weak capacity of both users and providers to identify information of value from the multimodel and multimethod data; and (4) inclusion of data that infer skill. Nonetheless, results provide a positive indication of a community of practice that is still maturing. WIREs Clim Change 2017, 8:e470. doi: 10.1002/wcc.470 This article is categorized under: Climate Models and Modeling > Knowledge Generation with Models Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Scenario Development and Application

Reanalysis data underpin much research in atmospheric and related sciences. While most reanalysis only cover the last couple of decades, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (20CR) and European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts (ERA20C and CERA20C) also developed reanalyses for the entire twentieth century that theoretically allow investigation of multidecadal variability. However, the approaches adopted to handle the massively evolving number of observations can cause spurious signals. Here we focus on wind speeds, as its assimilation is a key difference among these two products. We show that ERA20C and CERA20C feature significant trends in the North Atlantic and North Pacific wind speeds of up to 3 m/s per century. We show that there is a good relation between the trends in the reanalysis and assimilated wind speeds. In contrast, 20CR and the European Centre for Medium‐Range Weather Forecasts free model run ERA20CM do not show positive trends in the same regions. As a consequence, conclusions drawn from any single twentieth century reanalysis should be treated cautiously in particular in sectors with a strong wind dependency (e.g., wind energy).

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The high temporal variability of wind power generation represents a major challenge for the realization of a sustainable energy supply. Large backup and storage facilities are necessary to secure the supply in periods of low renewable generation, especially in countries with a high share of renewables. We show that strong climate change is likely to impede the system integration of intermittent wind energy. To this end, we analyze the temporal characteristics of wind power generation based on high-resolution climate projections for Europe and uncover a robust increase of backup energy and storage needs in most of Central, Northern and North-Western Europe. This effect can be traced back to an increase of the likelihood for long periods of low wind generation and an increase in the seasonal wind variability.

Abstract. Limiting anthropogenic climate change requires the fast decarbonization of the electricity system. Renewable electricity generation is determined by the weather and is hence subject to climate change. We simulate the operation of a coarse-scale fully renewable European electricity system based on downscaled highresolution climate data from EURO-CORDEX. Following a high-emission pathway (RCP8.5), we find a robust but modest increase (up to 7 %) of backup energy in Europe through the end of the 21st century. The absolute increase in the backup energy is almost independent of potential grid expansion, leading to the paradoxical effect that relative impacts of climate change increase in a highly interconnected European system. The increase is rooted in more homogeneous wind conditions over Europe resulting in intensified simultaneous generation shortfalls. Individual country contributions to European generation shortfall increase by up to 9 TWh yr −1 , reflecting an increase of up to 4 %. Our results are strengthened by comparison with a large CMIP5 ensemble using an approach based on circulation weather types.