Differential climate impacts for policy-relevant limits to global warming: the case of 1.5 °C and 2 °C

Abstract

Abstract. Robust appraisals of climate impacts at different levels of global-mean temperature increase are vital to guide assessments of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Currently, two such levels are discussed in the context of the international climate negotiations as long-term global temperature goals: a below 2 °C and a 1.5 °C limit in global-mean temperature rise above pre-industrial levels. Despite the prominence of these two temperature limits, a comprehensive assessment of the differences in climate impacts at these levels is still missing. Here we provide an assessment of key impacts of climate change at warming levels of 1.5 °C and 2 °C, including extreme weather events, water availability, agricultural yields, sea-level rise and risk of coral reef loss. Our results reveal substantial differences in impacts between 1.5 °C and 2 °C. For heat-related extremes, the additional 0.5 °C increase in global-mean temperature marks the difference between events at the upper limit of present-day natural variability and a new climate regime, particularly in tropical regions. Similarly, this warming difference is likely to be decisive for the future of tropical coral reefs. In a scenario with an end-of-century warming of 2 °C, virtually all tropical coral reefs are projected to be at risk of severe degradation due to temperature induced bleaching from 2050 onwards. This fraction is reduced to about 90 % in 2050 and projected to decline to 70 % by 2100 for a 1.5 °C scenario. Analyses of precipitation-related impacts reveal distinct regional differences and several hot-spots of change emerge. Regional reduction in median water availability for the Mediterranean is found to nearly double from 9 to 17 % between 1.5 °C and 2 °C, and the projected lengthening of regional dry spells increases from 7 % longer to 11 %. Projections for agricultural yields differ between crop types as well as world regions. While some (in particular high-latitude) regions may benefit, tropical regions like West Africa, South-East Asia, as well as Central and Northern South America are projected to face local yield reductions, particularly for wheat and maize. Best estimate sea-level rise projections based on two illustrative scenarios indicate a 50 cm rise by 2100 relative to year 2000-levels under a 2 °C warming, which is about 10 cm lower for a 1.5 °C scenario. Our findings highlight the importance of regional differentiation to assess future climate risks as well as different vulnerabilities to incremental increases in global-mean temperature. The article provides a consistent and comprehensive assessment of existing projections and a solid foundation for future work on refining our understanding of warming-level dependent climate impacts.

Climate Warming in Response to Emission Reductions Consistent with the Paris Agreement

“…e current warming in 2012 was estimated to be about 0.85 ± 0.14°C [22]. e spatial pattern of global warming under the INDC scenario was estimated based on the time-slice approach [23][24][25][26], where the spatial state at a specific warming point related to ΔT INDC is taken from the decadal time slices with the respective mean warming for each model separately.…”

The impacts avoided with a 1.5 °C climate target: a global and regional assessment

“…Schleussner et al 2016;James et al 2017). However, this approach is sensitive to multi-decadal variability, and differences between different time periods (and temperatures) will represent the combined effect of the different amount of forcing and multi-decadal variability.…”

“…The median increase in temperature under the lowest RCP (RCP2.6) is 1.6°C above pre-industrial levels, but 56% of climate models simulate an increase above 1.5°C and 22% above 2°C (Collins et al 2013). The one study that has so far explicitly assessed impacts at 1.5°C (Schleussner et al 2016) compared them with impacts at 2°C, but did not compare them with impacts under unmitigated climate change. It compared scenarios constructed from time periods in climate model simulations that had mean global temperature increases of 1.5 or 2°C, but a non-trivial portion of the difference between the two periods may be due to multidecadal climatic variability rather than the underlying climate change signal.…”

More homogeneous wind conditions under strong climate change decrease the potential for inter-state balancing of electricity in Europe

“…In line with the Paris Agreement, the scientific community is increasingly interested in differentiating climate impacts at 1.5 and 2 • C (Schleussner et al, 2016a;James et al, 2017) and the IPCC is currently preparing a special report on 1.5 • C. However, many low-carbon pathways rely on negative emissions during the second half of this century van Vuuren et al, 2016), although their feasibility at scale remains debated (Anderson and Peters, 2016). Future emissions from existing CO 2 -emitting infrastructure (Davis et al, 2010) and current political developments in the US (Trump, 2017), among other things, might impede fast decarbonization.…”