Negative emissions physically needed to keep global warming below 2 °C

Gasser, Thomas; Guivarch, Céline; Tachiiri, Kaoru; Jones, Chris D.; Ciais, Philippe

doi:10.1038/ncomms8958

Cited by 317 publications

(241 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…This is related to the point-of-no return approach (van Zalinge et al 2017), which prompts the question what to do once the climate has moved outside the viable region and can no longer be moved with traditional carbon pricing policies into the viable region. Negative carbon emissions and, therefore, unconventional policies such as geo-engineering are then called for (e.g., Keith 2000;Crutzen 2006;McCracken 2006;Bala et al 2008;Lenton and Vaughan 2009;Barrett et al 2014;Moreno-Cruz and Smulders 2016) and some argue that they are already called for to keep global warming below 2°C (e.g., Gassler et al 2015). Such policies act as insurance and are needed before the climate moves outside the viable set and reaches the point of no return.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The safe carbon budget

Ploeg

2018

Climatic Change

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Cumulative emissions drive peak global warming and determine the carbon budget needed to keep temperature below 2 or 1.5°C. This safe carbon budget is low if uncertainty about the transient climate response is high and risk tolerance (willingness to accept risk of overshooting the temperature target) is low. Together with energy costs, this budget determines the optimal carbon price and how quickly fossil fuel is abated and replaced by renewable energy. This price is the sum of the present discounted value of all future losses in aggregate production due to emitting one ton of carbon today plus the cost of peak warming that rises over time to reflect the increasing scarcity of carbon as temperature approaches its upper limit. If policy makers ignore production losses, the carbon price rises more rapidly. If they ignore the peak temperature constraint, the carbon price rises less rapidly. The alternative of adjusting damages upwards to factor in the peak warming constraint leads initially to a higher carbon price which rises less rapidly.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The safe carbon budget

Ploeg

2018

Climatic Change

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“…Although deep and rapid decarbonization may yet allow us to meet the <2 °C climate goal through emissions reduction alone 8 , this window of opportunity is rapidly closing 8,92 and so there is likely to be some need for NETs in the future 41,93 . Our analysis indicates that there are numerous resource implications associated with the widespread implementation of NETs that vary between technologies and that need to be satisfactorily addressed before NETs can play a significant role in achieving climate change goals.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biophysical and economic limits to negative CO2 emissions

et al. 2015

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NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION | www.nature.com/natureclimatechange 1 D espite two decades of effort to curb emissions of CO 2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs), emissions grew faster during the 2000s than in the 1990s 1 , and by 2010 had reached ~50 Gt CO 2 equivalent (CO 2 eq) yr −1 (refs 2,3). The continuing rise in emissions is a growing challenge for meeting the international goal of limiting warming to less than 2 °C relative to the pre-industrial era, particularly without stringent climate policies to decrease emissions in the near future 2-4 . As negative emissions technologies (NETs) seem ever more necessary 3,[5][6][7][8][9][10] To have a >50% chance of limiting warming below 2 °C, most recent scenarios from integrated assessment models (IAMs) require large-scale deployment of negative emissions technologies (NETs). These are technologies that result in the net removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. We quantify potential global impacts of the different NETs on various factors (such as land, greenhouse gas emissions, water, albedo, nutrients and energy) to determine the biophysical limits to, and economic costs of, their widespread application. Resource implications vary between technologies and need to be satisfactorily addressed if NETs are to have a significant role in achieving climate goals.options, to be able to decide which pathways are most desirable for dealing with climate change.There are distinct classes of NETs, such as: (1) bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) 11,12 ; (2) direct air capture of CO 2 from ambient air by engineered chemical reactions (DAC) 13,14 ; (3) enhanced weathering of minerals (EW) 15 , where natural weathering to remove CO 2 from the atmosphere is accelerated and the products stored in soils, or buried in land or deep ocean [16][17][18][19] ; (4) afforestation and reforestation (AR) to fix atmospheric carbon in biomass and soils [20][21][22] ; (5) manipulation of carbon uptake by the ocean, either

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“…Good risk management involves preparing for the worst, but hoping for the best. The reality of the worst is that the world is currently headed for an average increase in temperature of 4°C and beyond (Gasser et al 2015;Stafford Smith et al 2011). The current high-end trajectory would lead to severe climate change impacts, as reported for sea-level rise (Golledge et al 2015), flood risk (Alfieri et al 2015) and water scarcity (Schewe et al 2014) among others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

To what extent are land resource managers preparing for high-end climate change in Scotland?

Dunn

Rounsevell

Carlsen³

et al. 2017

Climatic Change

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We explore the individual and institutional conditions and the climate information used to underpin decision-making for adaptation to high-end climate change (HECC) scenarios in a land resource management context. HECC refers to extreme projections with global annual temperature increases of over 4°C. We analyse whether HECC scenarios are used in the adaptation decision-making of stakeholders who will tackle the potential problem. We also explore whether the adaptation actions being considered are pertinent only to future climate change or whether other drivers and information types are used in decision-making (including Climatic Change (2017) Adaptation Scotland/SNIFFER, Edinburgh, Scotland non-climate drivers). We also address the role of knowledge uncertainty in adaptation decision-making. Decision-makers perceive HECC as having a low probability of occurrence and so they do not directly account for HECC within existing actions to address climate change. Such actions focus on incremental rather than transformative solutions in which non-climate drivers are at least as important, and in many cases more important, than climate change alone. This reflects the need to accommodate multiple concerns and low risk options (i.e. incremental change). Uncertainty in climate change information is not a significant barrier to decision-making and stakeholders indicated little need for more climate information in support of adaptation decision-making. There is, however, an identified need for more information about the implications of particular sectoral and cross-sectoral impacts under HECC scenarios. The outcomes of this study provide evidence to assist in contextualising climate change information by creating usable, cross-sectoral, decision-centred information.

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Negative emissions physically needed to keep global warming below 2 °C

Cited by 317 publications

References 39 publications

The safe carbon budget

The safe carbon budget

Biophysical and economic limits to negative CO2 emissions

To what extent are land resource managers preparing for high-end climate change in Scotland?

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