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Current level and rate of warming determine emissions budgets under ambitious mitigation

Nature Geoscience volume 11, pages 574–579 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Some of the differences between recent estimates of the remaining budget of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C arise from different estimates of the level of warming to date relative to pre-industrial conditions, but not all. Here we show that, for simple geometrical reasons, the combination of both the level and rate of human-induced warming provides a remarkably accurate prediction of remaining emission budgets to peak warming across a broad range of scenarios, if budgets are expressed in terms of CO2-forcing-equivalent emissions. These in turn predict CO2 emissions budgets if (but only if) the fractional contribution of non-CO2 drivers to warming remains approximately unchanged, as it does in some ambitious mitigation scenarios, indicating a best-estimate remaining budget for 1.5 °C of about 22 years’ current emissions from mid-2017, with a ‘likely’ (1 standard error) range of 13–32 years. This provides a simple, transparent and model-independent metric of progress towards an ambitious temperature stabilization goal that could be used to inform the Paris Agreement stocktake process. It is less applicable to less ambitious goals. Alternative definitions of current warming and scenarios for non-CO2 drivers give lower 1.5 °C budgets. Lower budgets based on the MAGICC simple modelling system widely used in integrated assessment studies reflect its relatively high simulated current warming rates.

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Fig. 1: Emissions and temperatures in a 1.5 °C stabilization scenario.
Fig. 2: Current level and rate of warming constrain emission budgets to peak warming.
Fig. 3: Implications of current level and rate of warming for emissions budgets for 1.5 °C.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank P. Forster for proving up-to-date forcing series for our analysis, and J. Rogelj for his helpful comments and advice on this study. N.J.L., S.J. and E.G. were supported by the NERC DTP, MOAP and ECI student placement schemes; R.J.M. and M.R.A. are supported by the Oxford Martin School and ECI; and K.H. is supported by the World Weather Attribution Project. We acknowledge the WCRP’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling and thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Nicholas J. Leach, Stuart Jenkins, Euan Graham & Myles R. Allen

  2. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Nicholas J. Leach, Richard J. Millar, Karsten Haustein, Stuart Jenkins, Euan Graham & Myles R. Allen

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Contributions

N.J.L., R.J.M. and M.R.A. conceived the study; N.J.L. produced all figures except Supplementary Fig. 4; K.H. provided updated estimates of human-induced warming and performed the analysis generating Supplementary Fig. 4; S.J. contributed code for the calculation of CO2-fe emissions and E.G. helped with the analysis and checking of the IIASA MAGICC simulations. N.J.L. and M.R.A. wrote the paper, with all authors contributing.

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Correspondence to Nicholas J. Leach.

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Leach, N.J., Millar, R.J., Haustein, K. et al. Current level and rate of warming determine emissions budgets under ambitious mitigation. Nature Geosci 11, 574–579 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0156-y

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