High radiative forcing climate scenario relevance analyzed with a ten-million-member ensemble.
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Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39294116.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-52437-9 and PMC identifier 11411062.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Developing future climate projections begins with choosing future emissions scenarios. While scenarios are often based on storylines, here instead we produce a probabilistic multi-million-member ensemble of radiative forcing trajectories to assess the relevance of future forcing thresholds. We coupled a probabilistic database of future greenhouse gas emission scenarios with a probabilistically calibrated reduced complexity climate model. In 2100, we project median forcings of 5.1 watt per square meters (5th to 95th percentiles of 3.3 to 7.1), with roughly 0.5% probability of exceeding 8.5 watt per square meters, and a 1% probability of being lower than 2.6 watt per square meters. Although the probability of 8.5 watt per square meters scenarios is low, our results support their continued utility for calibrating damage functions, characterizing climate in the 22<sup>nd</sup> century (the probability of exceeding 8.5 watt per square meters increases to about 7% by 2150), and assessing low-probability/high-impact futures.