Importance of the Pre-Industrial Baseline in Determining the Likelihood of Exceeding the Paris Limits.

ABSTRACT: During the Paris Conference in 2015, nations of the world strengthened the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by agreeing to holding "the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C"1. However, "pre-industrial" was not defined. Here we investigate the implications of different choices of the pre-industrial baseline on the likelihood of exceeding these two temperature thresholds. We find that for the strongest mitigation scenario RCP2.6 and a medium scenario RCP4.5 the probability of exceeding the thresholds and timing of exceedance is highly dependent on the pre-industrial baseline, for example the probability of crossing 1.5°C by the end of the century under RCP2

SUBMITTER: Schurer AP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5544117 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature