Global climate goals for temperature, concentrations, emissions and cumulative emissions

  Available online: https://www.cawcr.gov.au/technical-reports/CTR_042.pdf

There are many different ways of quantifying the broad goal of "avoidance of dangerous human interference with the climate system", including targets for global temperature rise, radiative forcing, greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, GHG emissions in particular years, and cumulative GHG emissions ("carbon budgets"). The purpose of this report is to provide relationships between these different statements of a climate goal. Broadly, the approach is to start from target for global temperature increase above preindustrial temperatures (such as two degrees Celsius or any other target, to be met with a given probability of success), then determine the radiative forcing and equivalent GHG concentrations consistent with the target, and finally the emissions consistent with the required concentrations. Results are summarised in tabular form (Tables S1, S2 and S3). These tables are also available in a spread sheet, allowing the effects of different temperature targets and probabilities of success to be investigated interactively.

Collection(s) and Series:  CAWCR technical report- No. 42

Language(s): English

ISBN (or other code): 978-1-921826-62-7

Tags: Climate ; Climate change ; Mathematical models ; Greenhouse gas (GHG) ; Radiative forcing ; Australia Add tag