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Burning embers: towards more transparent and robust climate-change risk assessments

Abstract

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports provide policy-relevant insights about climate impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation through a process of peer-reviewed literature assessments underpinned by expert judgement. An iconic output from these assessments is the burning embers diagram, first used in the Third Assessment Report to visualize reasons for concern, which aggregate climate-change-related impacts and risks to various systems and sectors. These burning embers use colour transitions to show changes in the assessed level of risk to humans and ecosystems as a function of global mean temperature. In this Review, we outline the history and evolution of the burning embers and associated reasons for concern framework, focusing on the methodological approaches and advances. While the assessment framework and figure design have been broadly retained over time, refinements in methodology have occurred, including the consideration of different risks, use of confidence statements, more formalized protocols and standardized metrics. Comparison across reports reveals that the risk level at a given temperature has generally increased with each assessment cycle, reflecting accumulating scientific evidence. For future assessments, an explicit, transparent and systematic process of expert elicitation is needed to enhance comparability, quality and credibility of burning embers.

Key points

  • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has used the reasons for concern framework and burning embers diagrams since 2001 to assess and communicate risks from increasing global mean temperature on human and natural systems.

  • The framework and burning embers diagrams are developed using expert judgement, based on available information about climate impacts.

  • While assessment methods and figure design have been broadly retained across IPCC reports, risk levels at given temperatures have generally increased over time, owing to more comprehensive science.

  • Structured expert-elicitation methods can reduce bias and increase reproducibility by specifying the process for selecting experts, providing external information, eliciting individual and consensus judgements, and facilitating group interaction.

  • Recent IPCC Special Reports introduced formal protocols and standardized metrics to elicit risk thresholds. Despite challenges, these changes contributed to transparency and reliability.

  • Further development and use of standardized and transparent methods to elicit risk thresholds and build burning embers diagrams will continue to increase the robustness and credibility of IPCC assessments.

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Fig. 1: Third Assessment Report representation of burning embers and the reasons for concern framework.
Fig. 2: The evolution of the burning embers diagram.
Fig. 3: Comparison of risk thresholds across Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments.
Fig. 4: Flow chart of expert elicitation used in the Special Report on Climate Change and Land.
Fig. 5: Expert elicitation for the food stability ember in the Special Report on Climate Change and Land.
Fig. 6: Flow chart of sea-level-rise risk assessment in the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank J. Smith for useful reviews and informed comments on the paper. A.K.M. thanks the French National Research Agency (‘Investments for the Future’ programme, ANR-10-LABX-14-01). All views expressed herein are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect their respective institutions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the United Nations.

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Z.Z. and W.T. designed the study. Z.Z., E.L.D., W.T., K.C., M. Howden, K.W., J.P.E. and S.G. developed the improved expert-elicitation procedure for the SRCCL. A.K.M., H.-O.P. and Z.S. contributed to the SROCC burning embers development. P.M. harmonized the burning embers for three RFCs across the IPCC reports and developed figures 2 and 3. M. Howden, P.M. and W.T. led the analysis and design of figure 5. Z.Z.I., A.F. and C.R. contributed substantial additions to the history section. B.C.O. and P.M. helped research and draft the section on changes in risks. S.G., M. Hulbert and Z.Z.I. wrote the section on expert elicitation. Z.Z. led the drafting of the paper. All authors contributed to the editing and revision of the manuscript and helped develop conclusions.

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Correspondence to Zinta Zommers.

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Nature Reviews Earth & Environment thanks Kristie Ebi, Michael Mastrandrea and Michael Oppenheimer for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Related links

The Ember Factory in the Python Package Index: https://pypi.org/project/EmberFactory/

The Ember Factory online application: https://climrisk.org/emberfactory

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Zommers, Z., Marbaix, P., Fischlin, A. et al. Burning embers: towards more transparent and robust climate-change risk assessments. Nat Rev Earth Environ 1, 516–529 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-020-0088-0

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