Infrastructure built to protect cities from flooding can increase economic damages elsewhere.
Image credit: Michelle A. Hummel.
Edited by Robert E. Dickinson, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, and approved July 16, 2020 (received for review April 17, 2020)
Abstract
Climate simulation-based scenarios are routinely used to characterize a range of plausible climate futures. Despite some recent progress on bending the emissions curve, RCP8.5, the most aggressive scenario in assumed fossil fuel use for global climate models, will continue to serve as a useful tool for quantifying physical climate risk, especially over near- to midterm policy-relevant time horizons. Not only are the emissions consistent with RCP8.5 in close agreement with historical total cumulative CO2 emissions (within 1%), but RCP8.5 is also the best match out to midcentury under current and stated policies with still highly plausible levels of CO2 emissions in 2100.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: cschwalm{at}whrc.org.
Author contributions: C.R.S., S.G., and P.B.D. designed research; C.R.S. performed research; C.R.S. analyzed data; and C.R.S., with contributions from S.G. and P.B.D. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no competing interest.
Data Availability.
All data used for analysis are publicly available from refs. 6 and 9 as well as from RCP Database Version 2.0.5 (https://tntcat.iiasa.ac.at/RcpDb/).
- Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.
This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).
RCP8.5 tracks cumulative CO2 emissions
Article Classifications
- Physical Sciences
- Environmental Sciences
See related content:
Sign up for Article Alerts
You May Also be Interested in
Phosphine in the Venusian atmosphere can be explained without biogenic sources and is consistent with ongoing volcanism on Venus.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/NASA.
A study finds underreporting of COVID-19 cases in the United States and that the United States is likely far from achieving herd immunity through infection alone.
Image credit: Pixabay/geralt.
Researchers hope vaccines can serve as a key tool for addressing the opioid epidemic. The first clinical trials are underway, though big challenges remain.
Image credit: United States Drug Enforcement Administration.
Eyeing the effects of the Anthropocene, researchers offer a novel framework to identify and combine models from across the physical and social sciences.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Victor Lauer.