Much of Zero Emissions Commitment Occurs Before Reaching Net Zero Emissions

This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. The published version of this Preprint is available: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acab1a. This is version 2 of this Preprint.

Add a Comment

You must log in to post a comment.


Comments

There are no comments or no comments have been made public for this article.

Downloads

Download Preprint

Authors

Charles D. Koven , Benjamin Sanderson, Abigail L. S. Swann

Abstract

We explore the response of the Earth’s climate and carbon system to an idealized sequential addition and removal of CO2 to the atmosphere, following a symmetric and continuous emissions pathway, in contrast to the discontinuous emissions pathways that have largely informed our understanding of the climate response to net-zero and net-negative emissions to date. We find, using both an Earth System Model and an ensemble of simple climate model realizations, that warming during the emissions reduction and negative emissions phases is defined by a combination of a proportionality of warming to cumulative emissions characterized by the transient climate response to emissions (TCRE), and a deviation from that proportionality that is governed by the zero emissions commitment (ZEC). About half of the ZEC is realized before reaching zero emissions, and the ZEC thus also controls the timing between peak cumulative CO2 emissions and peak temperature, such that peak temperature may occur before peak cumulative emissions if ZEC is negative, underscoring the importance of ZEC in climate policies aimed to limit peak warming. Thus we argue that ZEC is best defined as the committed warming relative to the expected TCRE proportionality, rather than the additional committed warming that will occur after reaching net zero CO2 emissions. Once established, the combined TCRE and ZEC relationship holds almost to complete removal of prior cumulative CO2 emissions. As cumulative CO2 emissions approach zero through negative CO2 emissions, CO2 concentrations drop below preindustrial values, while residual long-term climate change continues, governed by multicentennial dynamical processes.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31223/X5D64Q

Subjects

Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences

Keywords

climate change, global carbon cycle, carbon dioxide removal, Climate stabilization, Climate restoration

Dates

Published: 2022-08-25 08:07

Last Updated: 2022-12-13 07:54

Older Versions
License

CC BY Attribution 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Conflict of interest statement:
None