This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: http://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15871. This is version 4 of this Preprint.
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Abstract
Anthropogenic activity is changing Earth’s climate and ecosystems in ways that are potentially dangerous and disruptive to humans. Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise, ensuring these changes will be felt for centuries beyond 2100, the current benchmark for prediction. Estimating the effects of past, current, and potential future emissions to only 2100 is therefore shortsighted. Critical problems for food production and climate-forced ‘survival’ migration are projected to arise well before 2100 raising questions regarding the habitability of some regions of the Earth after the turn of the century. To highlight the need for more distant horizon scanning, we model climate change to 2500 under a suite of emission scenarios and quantify associated projections of crop viability and heat stress. Together, our projections show global climate impacts significantly increase after 2100 without rapid mitigation. As a result, projections of climate and its effects on human well-being and associated governance and policy must be framed beyond 2100.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.31223/X5QG7D
Subjects
Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Keywords
climate change, food security, climate modelling, adaptation, heat stress, mitigation, loss and damage, migration
Dates
Published: 2020-12-17 00:35
Last Updated: 2021-09-11 21:02
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License
CC BY Attribution 4.0 International
Additional Metadata
Conflict of interest statement:
None.
Data Availability (Reason not available):
Data will made available after peer-review and acceptance.
There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.