Identification

Title

The role of prior assumptions in carbon budget calculations

Abstract

Cumulative emissions budgets and net-zero emission target dates are often used to frame climate negotiations (Frame et al., 2014; Millar et al., 2016; Van Vuuren et al., 2016; Rogelj et al., 2015b; Matthews et al., 2012). However, their utility for near-term policy decisions is confounded by uncertainties in future negative emissions capacity (Fuss et al., 2014; Smith et al., 2016; Larkin et al., 2018; Anderson and Peters, 2016), in the role of non-CO2 forcers (MacDougall et al., 2015) and in the long-term Earth system response to forcing (Rugenstein et al., 2019; Knutti et al., 2017; Armour, 2017). Such uncertainties may impact the utility of an absolute carbon budget if peak temperatures occur significantly after net-zero emissions are achieved, the likelihood of which is shown here to be conditional on prior assumptions about the long-term dynamics of the Earth system. In the context of these uncertainties, we show that the necessity and scope for negative emissions deployment later in the century can be conditioned on near-term emissions, providing support for a scenario framework which focuses on emissions reductions rather than absolute budgets (Rogelj et al., 2019b).

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7nk3j7s

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

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2020-06-25T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

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