EGU21-12718
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12718
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Large ensemble assessment of how the global surface warming response to cumulative carbon differs for negative and positive carbon emissions  

Negar Vakilifard1, Katherine Turner2, Ric Williams2, Philip Holden1, Neil Edwards1, and David Beerling3
Negar Vakilifard et al.
  • 1Environment, Earth and Ecosystems, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
  • 2Department of Earth, Ocean and Ecological Sciences, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
  • 3Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

The controls of the effective transient climate response (TCRE), defined in terms of the dependence of surface warming since the pre-industrial to the cumulative carbon emission, is explained in terms of climate model experiments for a scenario including positive emissions and then negative emission over a period of 400 years. We employ a pre-calibrated ensemble of GENIE, grid-enabled integrated Earth system model, consisting of 86 members to determine the process of controlling TCRE in both CO2 emissions and drawdown phases. Our results are based on the GENIE simulations with historical forcing from AD 850 including land use change, and the future forcing defined by CO2 emissions and a non-CO2 radiative forcing timeseries. We present the results for the point-source carbon capture and storage (CCS) scenario as a negative emission scenario, following the medium representative concentration pathway (RCP4.5), assuming that the rate of emission drawdown is 2 PgC/yr CO2 for the duration of 100 years. The climate response differs between the periods of positive and negative carbon emissions with a greater ensemble spread during the negative carbon emissions. The controls of the spread in ensemble responses are explained in terms of a combination of thermal processes (involving ocean heat uptake and physical climate feedback), radiative processes (saturation in radiative forcing from CO2 and non-CO2 contributions) and carbon dependences (involving terrestrial and ocean carbon uptake).  

How to cite: Vakilifard, N., Turner, K., Williams, R., Holden, P., Edwards, N., and Beerling, D.: Large ensemble assessment of how the global surface warming response to cumulative carbon differs for negative and positive carbon emissions  , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12718, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12718, 2021.

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