Identification

Title

Community climate simulations to assess avoided impacts in 1.5 and 2°C futures

Abstract

The Paris Agreement of December 2015 stated a goal to pursue efforts to keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees C above preindustrial levels and well below 2 degrees C. The IPCC was charged with assessing climate impacts at these temperature levels, but fully coupled equilibrium climate simulations do not currently exist to inform such assessments. In this study, we produce a set of scenarios using a simple model designed to achieve long-term 1.5 and 2 degrees C temperatures in a stable climate. These scenarios are then used to produce century-scale ensemble simulations using the Community Earth System Model, providing impact-relevant long-term climate data for stabilization pathways at 1.5 and 2 degrees C levels and an overshoot 1.5 degrees C case, which are realized (for the 21st century) in the coupled model and are freely available to the community. Here we describe the design of the simulations and a brief overview of their impact-relevant climate response. Exceedance of historical record temperature occurs with 60% greater frequency in the 2 degrees C climate than in a 1.5 degrees C climate aggregated globally, and with twice the frequency in equatorial and arid regions. Extreme precipitation intensity is statistically significantly higher in a 2.0 degrees C climate than a 1.5 degrees C climate in some specific regions (but not all). The model exhibits large differences in the Arctic, which is ice-free with a frequency of 1 in 3 years in the 2.0 degrees C scenario, and 1 in 40 years in the 1.5 degrees C scenario. Significance of impact differences with respect to multi-model variability is not assessed.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7zg6vr4

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

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End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2017-09-19T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

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name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact