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Chris Jones,1 Eddy Robertson,1 Vivek Arora,2 Pierre Friedlingstein,3 Elena Shevliakova,4 Laurent Bopp,5 Victor Brovkin,6 Tomohiro Hajima,7 Etsushi Kato,8 Michio Kawamiya,7 Spencer Liddicoat,1 Keith Lindsay,9 Christian H. Reick,6 Caroline Roelandt,10 Joachim Segschneider,6 and Jerry Tjiputra
Abstract:
The carbon cycle is a crucial earth system component affecting climate and atmospheric composition. The response of natural carbon uptake to CO2 and climate change will determine anthropogenic emissions compatible with a target CO2 pathway. For CMIP5 4 future Representative Concentration Pathways have been generated by Integrated Assessment Models and used as scenarios by state-of-the-art climate models, enabling quantification of compatible carbon emissions for the 4 scenarios by complex, process-based models.
Here we present results from 15 such Earth System GCMs for future changes in land and ocean carbon storage and the implications for anthropogenic emissions. The results are consistent with the underlying scenarios, but show substantial model spread. Uncertainty in land carbon uptake due to differences among models is comparable with the spread across scenarios. Model estimates of historical fossil fuel emissions agree well with reconstructions and future projections for RCP2.6 and RCP4.5 are consistent with the IAMs. For high-end scenarios (6.0 and 8.5) GCMs simulate smaller compatible emissions than the IAMs, indicating a larger climate-carbon cycle feedback in the GCMs in these scenarios.
For the RCP2.6 mitigation scenario an average reduction of 50% in emissions by 2050 from 1990 levels is required but with very large model spread (14-96%). The models also disagree on both the requirement for sustained negative emissions to achieve the RCP2.6 CO2 concentration and the success of this scenario to restrict global warming below 2°C. All models agree that the future airborne-fraction depends strongly on the emissions profile with higher airborne-fraction for higher emissions scenarios.
