Emission metrics and sea level rise

Sterner, Erik; Johansson, Daniel; Azar, Christian

doi:10.1007/s10584-014-1258-1

Cited by 18 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…This means that IGTP values are higher than GTP, as the initial high radiative (and temperature) forcing is effectively 'remembered' in the cumulative time horizon estimates. 26,28 Values are approximately 12% higher than the GWP for the 20, 50, 100 and 500 year time horizons.…”

Section: Igtpintegrated Global Temperature Change Potentialmentioning

confidence: 86%

Methane emissions: choosing the right climate metric and time horizon

Balcombe

Speirs

Brandon

et al. 2018

Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts

141

108

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Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas (GHG) than CO2, but it has a shorter atmospheric lifespan, thus its relative climate impact reduces significantly over time. Different GHGs are often conflated into a single metric to compare technologies and supply chains, such as the global warming potential (GWP). However, the use of GWP is criticised, regarding: (1) the need to select a timeframe; (2) its physical basis on radiative forcing; and (3) the fact that it measures the average forcing of a pulse over time rather than a sustained emission at a specific end-point in time. Many alternative metrics have been proposed which tackle different aspects of these limitations and this paper assesses them by their key attributes and limitations, with respect to methane emissions. A case study application of various metrics is produced and recommendations are made for the use of climate metrics for different categories of applications. Across metrics, CO2 equivalences for methane range from 4-199 gCO2eq./gCH4, although most estimates fall between 20 and 80 gCO2eq./gCH4. Therefore the selection of metric and time horizon for technology evaluations is likely to change the rank order of preference, as demonstrated herein with the use of natural gas as a shipping fuel versus alternatives. It is not advisable or conservative to use only a short time horizon, e.g. 20 years, which disregards the long-term impacts of CO2 emissions and is thus detrimental to achieving eventual climate stabilisation. Recommendations are made for the use of metrics in 3 categories of applications. Short-term emissions estimates of facilities or regions should be transparent and use a single metric and include the separated contribution from each GHG. Multi-year technology assessments should use both short and long term static metrics (e.g. GWP) to test robustness of results. Longer term energy assessments or decarbonisation pathways must use both short and long-term metrics and where this has a large impact on results, climate models should be incorporated. Dynamic metrics offer insight into the timing of emissions, but may be of only marginal benefit given uncertainties in methodological assumptions.

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Section: Igtpintegrated Global Temperature Change Potentialmentioning

confidence: 86%

Methane emissions: choosing the right climate metric and time horizon

Balcombe

Speirs

Brandon

et al. 2018

Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts

141

108

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Integrated metrics would be more appropriate in economic analyses (Kandlikar 1995, Kandlikar 1996 which often look to minimise an integrated damage measure; however there is no internationally agreed damage measure due to the structural uncertainty in their underlying functional form (Weitzman 2012). Endpoint sea-level rise metrics do have mathematically similar constructions to integrated radiative forcing or integrated temperature metrics (Sterner et al 2014). These would be appropriate if there were a specified sea-level rise threshold below which we agreed to attempt to stay.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stable climate metrics for emissions of short and long-lived species—combining steps and pulses

Collins

Frame

Fuglestvedt

et al. 2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Multi-gas climate agreements rely on a methodology (widely referred to as 'metrics') to place emissions of different gases on a CO 2 -equivalent scale. There has been an ongoing debate on the extent to which existing metrics serve current climate policy. Endpoint metrics (such as global temperature change potential GTP) are the most closely related to policy goals based on temperature limits (such as Article 2 of the Paris Agreement). However, for short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs), endpoint metrics vary strongly with time horizon making them difficult to apply in practical situations. We show how combining endpoint metrics for a step change in SLCF emissions with a pulse emission of CO 2 leads to an endpoint metric that only varies slowly over time horizons of interest. We therefore suggest that these combined step-pulse metrics (denoted combined global warming potential CGWP and combined global temperature change potential CGTP) can be a useful way to include short and longlived species in the same basket in policy applications-this assumes a single basket approach is preferred by policy makers. The advantage of a combined step-pulse metric for SLCFs is that for species with a lifetime less than 20 years a single time horizon of around 75 years can cover the range of timescales appropriate to the Paris Agreement. These metrics build on recent work using the traditional global warming potential (GWP) metric in a new way, called GWP * . We show how the GWP * relates to CGWP and CGTP and that it systematically underestimates the temperature effects of SLCFs by up to 20%. These step-pulse metrics are all more appropriate than the conventional GWP for comparing the relative contributions of different species to future temperature targets and for SLCFs they are much less dependent on time horizon than GTP.

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“…There is a widely accepted indicator which is the global mean near-surface temperature change, though of course not unique (e.g. Sterner et al, 2014). The basic causal relationship of a climate relevant emission can be shortly summarized as follows: An emission changes the atmospheric composition (which might include cloudiness and cloud properties) which in turn changes the way solar radiation propagates through the atmosphere, warming the Earth's surface and how the Earth radiates back to space.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

How ambiguous are climate metrics? And are we prepared to assess and compare the climate impact of new air traffic technologies?

Grewe

Dahlmann

2015

Atmospheric Environment

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How ambiguous are climate metrics? And are we prepared to assess and compare the climate impact of new air traffic technologies?Posing the adequate climate question reduces a large amount of a perceived ambiguity of climate metrics. Five steps are proposed to adequately assess the climate impact of new technologies. Adequate reference, emission scenario, climate indicator, and time horizon can only be deduced from a well-posed question.

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Emission metrics and sea level rise

Cited by 18 publications

References 33 publications

Methane emissions: choosing the right climate metric and time horizon

Methane emissions: choosing the right climate metric and time horizon

Stable climate metrics for emissions of short and long-lived species—combining steps and pulses

How ambiguous are climate metrics? And are we prepared to assess and compare the climate impact of new air traffic technologies?

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