High radiative forcing climate scenario relevance analyzed with a ten-million-member ensemble

Marcus C. Sarofim (), Christopher J. Smith, Parker Malek, Erin E. McDuffie, Corinne A. Hartin, Claire R. Lay and Sarah McGrath
Additional contact information
Marcus C. Sarofim: US Environmental Protection Agency
Christopher J. Smith: Met Office Hadley Centre
Parker Malek: Tabor Center
Erin E. McDuffie: US Environmental Protection Agency
Corinne A. Hartin: US Environmental Protection Agency
Claire R. Lay: Tabor Center
Sarah McGrath: Tabor Center

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Developing future climate projections begins with choosing future emissions scenarios. While scenarios are often based on storylines, here instead we produce a probabilistic multi-million-member ensemble of radiative forcing trajectories to assess the relevance of future forcing thresholds. We coupled a probabilistic database of future greenhouse gas emission scenarios with a probabilistically calibrated reduced complexity climate model. In 2100, we project median forcings of 5.1 watt per square meters (5th to 95th percentiles of 3.3 to 7.1), with roughly 0.5% probability of exceeding 8.5 watt per square meters, and a 1% probability of being lower than 2.6 watt per square meters. Although the probability of 8.5 watt per square meters scenarios is low, our results support their continued utility for calibrating damage functions, characterizing climate in the 22nd century (the probability of exceeding 8.5 watt per square meters increases to about 7% by 2150), and assessing low-probability/high-impact futures.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52437-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-52437-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-52437-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().