Open AccessPlausible 2005–2050 emissions scenarios project between 2 °C and 3 °C of warming by 2100
Author(s) -
Roger Pielke,
Matthew G. Burgess,
Justin Ritchie
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
environmental research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.37
H-Index - 124
ISSN - 1748-9326
DOI - 10.1088/1748-9326/ac4ebf
Subject(s) - climate change , environmental science , global warming , greenhouse gas , limiting , fossil fuel , coupled model intercomparison project , climatology , climate model , natural resource economics , economics , mechanical engineering , ecology , engineering , biology , geology
Emissions scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are central to climate change research and policy. Here, we identify subsets of scenarios of the IPCC’s 5th (AR5) and forthcoming 6th (AR6) Assessment Reports, including the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway scenarios, that project 2005–2050 fossil-fuel-and-industry (FFI) CO 2 emissions growth rates most consistent with observations from 2005 to 2020 and International Energy Agency (IEA) projections to 2050. These scenarios project between 2 °C and 3 °C of warming by 2100, with a median of 2.2 °C. The subset of plausible IPCC scenarios does not represent all possible trajectories of future emissions and warming. Collectively, they project continued mitigation progress and suggest the world is presently on a lower emissions trajectory than is often assumed. However, these scenarios also indicate that the world is still off track from limiting 21st-century warming to 1.5 °C or below 2 °C.