Lamboll, R.D., Nicholls, Z.R.J., Smith, C.J. orcid.org/0000-0003-0599-4633 et al. (3 more authors)
(2023)
Assessing the size and uncertainty of remaining carbon budgets.
Nature Climate Change, 13 (12).
pp. 1360-1367.
ISSN 1758-678X
Abstract
The remaining carbon budget (RCB), the net amount of CO₂ humans can still emit without exceeding a chosen global warming limit, is often used to evaluate political action against the goals of the Paris Agreement. RCB estimates for 1.5 °C are small, and minor changes in their calculation can therefore result in large relative adjustments. Here we evaluate recent RCB assessments by the IPCC and present more recent data, calculation refinements and robustness checks that increase confidence in them. We conclude that the RCB for a 50% chance of keeping warming to 1.5 °C is around 250 GtCO₂ as of January 2023, equal to around six years of current CO₂ emissions. For a 50% chance of 2 °C the RCB is around 1,200 GtCO₂. Key uncertainties affecting RCB estimates are the contribution of non-CO₂ emissions, which depends on socioeconomic projections as much as on geophysical uncertainty, and potential warming after net zero CO₂.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 12 Jan 2024 14:53 |
Last Modified: | 16 May 2024 14:20 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41558-023-01848-5 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:207508 |