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Preparing for a post-net-zero world

Nature Climate Change volume 12, pages 775–777 (2022)Cite this article

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Current greenhouse gas emissions will continue to affect the climate even after we reach net-zero emissions. We must understand how and prepare for a cooling planet.

For the last century, the planet has experienced warming due to humanity’s collective, albeit unequal, greenhouse gas emissions. The rise in global-average temperatures has been accompanied by rapidly warming land and slower warming oceans, rising sea levels and shrinking ice coverage. However, with global greenhouse gas emissions hopefully peaking soon1 and international, and some national and sub-national, targets in place to reach net-zero emissions2 (that is, a state where anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere are balanced by anthropogenic removal from the atmosphere), a new and very different climate is potentially on the horizon. Net-zero emissions would probably be followed by net-negative emissions (where anthropogenic removal of greenhouse gases exceeds anthropogenic emissions) as policies to support emissions reductions and greater carbon removal progress. If global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions are reached, then global cooling will probably follow3. Under net-negative greenhouse gas emissions, this cooling would be even greater4.

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Fig. 1: The factors that will influence the nature of a post-net-zero climate.

Data availability

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature dataset (‘Monthly Global Average Temperature (annual summary)’)20 was used to generate the global mean surface temperature series in Fig. 1 and is publicly available here: http://berkeleyearth.org/data/.

Code availability

The code used to produce Fig. 1 is available on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

A.D.K. and J.K.S. acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council (DE180100638 and FL160100028, respectively). A.D.K. and T.Z. acknowledge the Australian Government National Environmental Science Program. Z.J.R.N. acknowledges funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme grant 101003536.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Andrew D. King, Harry L. O. McClelland, Celia McMichael, Zebedee R. J. Nicholls & J. M. Kale Sniderman

  2. ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Andrew D. King

  3. Melbourne Climate Futures, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Andrew D. King, Jacqueline Peel, Kathryn J. Bowen, Celia McMichael & Zebedee R. J. Nicholls

  4. Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Jacqueline Peel & Kathryn J. Bowen

  5. CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Aspendale, Victoria, Australia

    Tilo Ziehn

  6. Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Kathryn J. Bowen

  7. Climate Resource, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Zebedee R. J. Nicholls

  8. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

    Zebedee R. J. Nicholls

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  1. Andrew D. King
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Contributions

A.D.K. conceived the study, led the writing and designed Fig. 1. All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Andrew D. King.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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King, A.D., Peel, J., Ziehn, T. et al. Preparing for a post-net-zero world. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 775–777 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01446-x

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