Achieving the climate goals of the Paris Agreement requires deep greenhouse gas emissions reductions towards a net-zero world and beyond. Advancements in mitigation-relevant science continuously inform the strategies and measures that society could pursue to achieve this goal. This session aims to further our understanding of the science surrounding the pursuit of the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal, including carbon budgets, zero emissions commitment, carbon dioxide removal strategies, and their policy implications. We will explore global to regional climate dynamics under net-zero, and peak and decline CO2 pathways, and mechanisms of committed or irreversible changes, including the risk of non-linear Earth system change.

We welcome both theoretical, empirical and modelling studies exploring all aspects of climate change in response to ambitious mitigation scenarios, including overshoot pathways through scenarios that pursue net negative emissions and a reversal of global warming. In addition to studies exploring the remaining carbon budget and the transient climate response to cumulative emissions of CO2 (TCRE), we welcome contributions on the zero emissions commitment (ZEC), effects of different forcings and feedbacks (e.g. permafrost carbon feedback), non-CO2 contributions to stringent climate change mitigation (e.g. non-CO2 greenhouse gases, and aerosols), and climate and carbon-cycle effects of carbon removal strategies, including their implications for policy. We also invite analysis focusing on consequences in a wide range of Earth System components and sectors, from ocean dynamics to the cryosphere, biodiversity and biosphere changes to human systems and economic consequences of overshoot, as well as the implications of overshoots for climate change adaptation planning.

We invite contributions that use a variety of tools, including fully coupled Earth System Models (ESMs), sectoral impact models, Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), or Simple Climate Models (SCMs) and climate emulators. Interdisciplinary contributions from the fields of climate policy and economics focused on applications of carbon budgets, net-zero pathways, and their wider implications are also encouraged.