Misrepresentation of the IPCC CO2 emission scenarios
Estimates of recent fossil fuel CO2 emissions have been compared with the IPCC SRES (Special Report on Emission Scenarios) emission scenarios that had been developed for analysis of future climate change, impacts and mitigation. In some cases this comparison uses averages across subgroups of SRES sc...
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Published in | Nature geoscience Vol. 3; no. 6; pp. 376 - 377 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Nature Publishing Group
01.06.2010
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Estimates of recent fossil fuel CO2 emissions have been compared with the IPCC SRES (Special Report on Emission Scenarios) emission scenarios that had been developed for analysis of future climate change, impacts and mitigation. In some cases this comparison uses averages across subgroups of SRES scenarios and for one category of greenhouse gases (industrial sources of CO2). That approach can be misleading and cause confusion as it is inconsistent with many of the papers on future climate change projections that are based on a specific subset of closely scrutinized SRES scenarios, known as illustrative marker scenarios. Here, we show that comparison between recent estimates of fossil fuel emissions trends and the SRES illustrative marker scenarios leads to the conclusion that recent trends are not outside the SRES range. Furthermore, the recent economic downturn appears to have brought actual emission back toward the middle of the SRES illustrative marker scenarios. We also note that SRES emission scenarios are designed to reflect potential alternative long-term trends in a world without climate policy intervention and the trend in the resulting climate change is not sensitive to short-term fluctuations. |
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Bibliography: | USDOE AC05-76RL01830 PNNL-SA-70040 |
ISSN: | 1752-0894 1752-0908 |
DOI: | 10.1038/ngeo880 |