Joeri Rogelj et al 2010 Environ. Res. Lett. 5 034013 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/5/3/034013
Joeri Rogelj1,2,8, Claudine Chen1, Julia Nabel1,3, Kirsten Macey4, William Hare1,4, Michiel Schaeffer4,5, Kathleen Markmann1, Niklas Höhne6, Katrine Krogh Andersen7 and Malte Meinshausen1
Show affiliationsThis analysis of the Copenhagen Accord evaluates emission reduction pledges by individual countries against the Accord's climate-related objectives. Probabilistic estimates of the climatic consequences for a set of resulting multi-gas scenarios over the 21st century are calculated with a reduced complexity climate model, yielding global temperature increase and atmospheric CO2 and CO2-equivalent concentrations. Provisions for banked surplus emission allowances and credits from land use, land-use change and forestry are assessed and are shown to have the potential to lead to significant deterioration of the ambition levels implied by the pledges in 2020. This analysis demonstrates that the Copenhagen Accord and the pledges made under it represent a set of dissonant ambitions. The ambition level of the current pledges for 2020 and the lack of commonly agreed goals for 2050 place in peril the Accord's own ambition: to limit global warming to below 2 °C, and even more so for 1.5 °C, which is referenced in the Accord in association with potentially strengthening the long-term temperature goal in 2015. Due to the limited level of ambition by 2020, the ability to limit emissions afterwards to pathways consistent with either the 2 or 1.5 °C goal is likely to become less feasible.
92.70.Mn Impacts of global change; global warming
92.60.hf Tropospheric composition and chemistry, constituent transport and chemistry
92.70.Np Global climate modeling
89.60.Gg Impact of natural and man-made disasters
Issue 3 (July-September 2010)
Received 6 July 2010, accepted for publication 16 September 2010
Published 29 September 2010
Joeri Rogelj et al 2010 Environ. Res. Lett. 5 034013
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