A probabilistic analysis of cumulative carbon emissions and long-term planetary warming

Fyke, Jeremy Garmeson; Matthews, H. Damon

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/115007

Title: A probabilistic analysis of cumulative carbon emissions and long-term planetary warming

Journal Article · Mon Nov 16 00:00:00 EST 2015 · Environmental Research Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/115007· OSTI ID:1335625

Fyke, Jeremy Garmeson ^[1]; Matthews, H. Damon ^[2]

Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Concordia Univ., Montreal, QC (Canada)

Efforts to mitigate and adapt to long-term climate change could benefit greatly from probabilistic estimates of cumulative carbon emissions due to fossil fuel burning and resulting CO₂-induced planetary warming. Here we demonstrate the use of a reduced-form model to project these variables. We performed simulations using a large-ensemble framework with parametric uncertainty sampled to produce distributions of future cumulative emissions and consequent planetary warming. A hind-cast ensemble of simulations captured 1980–2012 historical CO₂ emissions trends and an ensemble of future projection simulations generated a distribution of emission scenarios that qualitatively resembled the suite of Representative and Extended Concentration Pathways. The resulting cumulative carbon emission and temperature change distributions are characterized by 5–95th percentile ranges of 0.96–4.9 teratonnes C (Tt C) and 1.4 °C–8.5 °C, respectively, with 50th percentiles at 3.1 Tt C and 4.7 °C. Within the wide range of policy-related parameter combinations that produced these distributions, we found that low-emission simulations were characterized by both high carbon prices and low costs of non-fossil fuel energy sources, suggesting the importance of these two policy levers in particular for avoiding dangerous levels of climate warming. With this analysis we demonstrate a probabilistic approach to the challenge of identifying strategies for limiting cumulative carbon emissions and assessing likelihoods of surpassing dangerous temperature thresholds.

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Research Organization:: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

Grant/Contract Number:: AC52-06NA25396

OSTI ID:: 1335625

Report Number(s):: LA-UR-15-28788

Journal Information:: Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 10, Issue 11; ISSN 1748-9326

Publisher:: IOP PublishingCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 6 works

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