Significant implications of permafrost thawing for climate change control

Mikel González-Eguino and Marc B. Neumann
Additional contact information
Marc B. Neumann: Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3)

Climatic Change, 2016, vol. 136, issue 2, No 16, 388 pages

Abstract: Abstract Large amounts of carbon are stored as permafrost within the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. As permafrost thaws due to climate warming, carbon dioxide and methane are released. Recent studies indicate that the pool of carbon susceptible to future thaw is higher than was previously thought and that more carbon could be released by 2100, even under low emission pathways. We use an integrated model of the climate and the economy to study how including these new estimates influence the control of climate change to levels that will likely keep the temperature increase below 2 °C (radiative forcing of 2.6 Wm−2). According to our simulations, the fossil fuel and industrial CO2 emissions need to peak 5–10 years earlier and the carbon budget needs to be reduced by 6–17 % to offset this additional source of warming. The required increase in carbon price implies a 6–21 % higher mitigation cost to society compared to a situation where emissions from permafrost are not considered. Including other positive climate feedbacks, currently not accounted for in integrated assessment models, could further increase these numbers.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-016-1666-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:climat:v:136:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1007_s10584-016-1666-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-016-1666-5

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

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