Critical adjustment of land mitigation pathways for assessing countries’ climate progress
Grassi, Giacomo; Stehfest, Elke; Rogelj, Joeri; van Vuuren, Detlef; Cescatti, Alessandro; House, Jo; Nabuurs, Gert Jan; Rossi, Simone; Alkama, Ramdane; Viñas, Raúl Abad; Calvin, Katherine; Ceccherini, Guido; Federici, Sandro; Fujimori, Shinichiro; Gusti, Mykola; Hasegawa, Tomoko; Havlik, Petr; Humpenöder, Florian; Korosuo, Anu; Perugini, Lucia; Tubiello, Francesco N.; Popp, Alexander
(2021) Nature Climate Change, volume 11, issue 5, pp. 425 - 434
(Article)
Abstract
Mitigation pathways by Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) describe future emissions that keep global warming below specific temperature limits and are compared with countries’ collective greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction pledges. This is needed to assess mitigation progress and inform emission targets under the Paris Agreement. Currently, however, a mismatch of
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~5.5 GtCO2 yr−1 exists between the global land-use fluxes estimated with IAMs and from countries’ GHG inventories. Here we present a ‘Rosetta stone’ adjustment to translate IAMs’ land-use mitigation pathways to estimates more comparable with GHG inventories. This does not change the original decarbonization pathways, but reallocates part of the land sink to be consistent with GHG inventories. Adjusted cumulative emissions over the period until net zero for 1.5 or 2 °C limits are reduced by 120–192 GtCO2 relative to the original IAM pathways. These differences should be taken into account to ensure an accurate assessment of progress towards the Paris Agreement.
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Keywords: Biogeochemistry, Taverne, Environmental Science (miscellaneous), Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
ISSN: 1758-678X
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Note: Funding Information: G.G. acknowledges funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 VERIFY project (no. 776810). J.R. acknowledges funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 CONSTRAIN project (no. 820829). F.H. and D.v.V. acknowledge funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 ENGAGE project (no. 821471). S. Fujimori and T.H. were supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (JPMEERF20202002) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan and the Sumitomo Foundation. F.N.T. was supported by regular programme funding by member states to FAO. FAOSTAT and FRA are made possible through country data reporting processes to FAO and contributions of experts in the member states. The views expressed are purely those of the writers and may not under any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission, FAO or any other institution. Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
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