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Transparency crucial to Paris climate scenarios—Response

Journal Article · · Science
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [3];  [1];  [4];  [1]
  1. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States). Joint Global Change Research Institute; Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
  2. US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Washington, DC (United States)
  3. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
  4. Climate Analytics, Berlin (Germany); International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg (Austria)
+ Show Author Affiliations

King et al. raise important issues, several of which pertain to the broader policy discourse surrounding international climate negotiations and countries’ cli-mate pledges rather than the modeling conducted in our Policy Forum. We agree with King et al. that the updated Paris Agreement pledges could paint an overly optimistic picture of the future, especially if their success depends on postponing deeper reductions until after 2030. To illustrate a less-optimistic future, our Policy Forum includes scenarios showing what would happen if countries continued to implement current policies alone. Importantly, the “Current policy” scenarios in the Policy Forum result in less than a 10% chance of limiting global warming to below 2°C this century, whereas the “Updated pledges” scenarios result in at least a 33% chance of achieving the same temperature goal. Additional policy measures could help bridge emission gaps between current policies, updated pledges, and the global emission levels needed to cost-effectively achieve the Paris Agreement’s climate goals (1).

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
2329510
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA--169866
Journal Information:
Science, Journal Name: Science Journal Issue: 6583 Vol. 375; ISSN 0036-8075
Publisher:
AAASCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (8)

The role of carbon dioxide removal in net-zero emissions pledges journal December 2021
Good practice policies to bridge the emissions gap in key countries journal March 2022
Measuring progress from nationally determined contributions to mid-century strategies journal November 2017
The contribution of Paris to limit global warming to 2 °C journal November 2015
Global economic consequences of deploying bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) journal August 2016
The role of direct air capture and negative emissions technologies in the shared socioeconomic pathways towards +1.5 °C and +2 °C futures journal October 2021
Can Paris pledges avert severe climate change? journal November 2015
Source code and data for Ou et al. (2021) Updates to Paris climate pledges improve chances of limiting global warming to well below 2°C dataset January 2021

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES