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Implications of the Paris agreement for the ocean

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 732–735 (2016)Cite this article

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In the aftermath of COP21, potential post-2030 emission trajectories and their consistency with the 2 °C target are a core concern for the ocean scientific community in light of the end-century risks of impact scenarios.

On the road to the Twenty-first Conference of the Parties (COP21) and to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), ocean scientists assessed the risks of the impact arising from past and future cumulative carbon emissions. Results suggested that several key marine and coastal ecosystems will face high risks of impact well before 2100, even under the most stringent IPCC Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP2.6)1,2,3,4,5,6. In parallel, small island developing states (SIDS), by nature 'ocean countries', have argued for several years that a temperature increase of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, rather than 2 °C, should be the UNFCCC target. During COP21, together with the European Union, SIDS initiated the 'coalition of high ambition', which gathered more than 100 nations from the least developed countries to highly developed ones7, giving more weight to their historical pledge. Such ocean-driven scientific arguments and political efforts contributed to push the Paris climate talks towards an ambitious outcome, and the Paris Agreement8 eventually established the goal of holding the global mean atmospheric temperature rise by the end of this century to well below 2 °C, if not 1.5 °C, above pre-industrial levels. The implementation of such an ambitious target is now a key concern for the ocean scientific community. This concern is reinforced by recent studies suggesting that end-century climate-related changes in the ocean will be more dramatic than previously reported in the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC (sea-level rise9, for example).

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Figure 1: Contrasting risks of impact for the ocean and society in 2100 from different GHG emission pathways.

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Acknowledgements

This is a product of The Oceans 2015 Initiative, an expert group supported by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the BNP Paribas Foundation and the Monégasque Association for Ocean Acidification.The authors also benefited from financial support from the Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), German Environment Ministry, Gross Family Foundation, European Climate Foundation (ECF), Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l'Énergie (ADEME), Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), European Union DG CLIMA (21.0104/2014/684427/SER/CLIMA.A.4) and the French Government (ANR-10-LABX-01). A.K.M. acknowledges support from the French National Research Agency (CapAdapt Project ANR-2011-JSH1-004 01 and ANR-15-CE03-0003). R.B. is supported by the RESCCUE project funded by the French Development Agency and the French Global Environment Facility (AFD CZZ 1647 01 F and FFEM CZZ 1667 01 H). F.J. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation.The contents of this piece are solely the opinions of the authors and do not constitute a statement of policy, decision or position on behalf of the French Government, the Pacific Community or any funding partners.The authors also thank W. Cramer and P. Barthélemy for their comments on an earlier version.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, Sciences Po, 27 rue Saint Guillaume, F-75007, Paris, France

    Alexandre K. Magnan, Michel Colombier, Henri Waisman, Thomas Spencer & Jean-Pierre Gattuso

  2. Pacific Community, B.P. D5, Noumea Cedex, 98848, New Caledonia

    Raphaël Billé

  3. Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Sidlerstr. 5, CH-3012, Bern, Switzerland

    Fortunat Joos

  4. Global Change Institute and ARC Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies, University of Queensland, Building 20, St Lucia, 4072, Queensland, Australia

    Ove Hoegh-Guldberg

  5. Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Am Handelshafen 12, D-27570, Bremerhaven, Germany

    Hans-Otto Pörtner

  6. CNRS-INSU, Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefranche, F-06230, Villefranche-sur-mer, France

    Jean-Pierre Gattuso

  7. Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, Observatoire Océanologique, F-06230, Villefranche-sur-mer, France

    Jean-Pierre Gattuso

Authors
  1. Alexandre K. Magnan
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  4. Fortunat Joos
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  5. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg
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  6. Hans-Otto Pörtner
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  7. Henri Waisman
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  8. Thomas Spencer
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  9. Jean-Pierre Gattuso
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Contributions

A.K.M., J.-P.G., M.C. and R.B. designed the research. A.K.M., J.-P.G. and F.J. put Fig. 1 and Table 1 together, and A.K.M., J.-P.G., O.H.-G., F.J. and H.-O.P. analysed ocean-related data and drew up the conclusions from Fig. 1 and Table 1. M.C., H.W. and T.S. analysed INDC-related material. All authors contributed to drafting and revising the manuscript as well as to the Supplementary Information.

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Correspondence to Alexandre K. Magnan.

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Magnan, A., Colombier, M., Billé, R. et al. Implications of the Paris agreement for the ocean. Nature Clim Change 6, 732–735 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3038

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