After yesterday, we now landed on changes in extremes🌡️⛈️🥵🧺!
And although I don't like to pick favorites, I do like this visual very much.
Too big for a single tweet, this one shows how hot extremes over land change compared to when our great-grandparents were alive. (2/n)
Did you notice in the previous figure: a heat extreme that our great-grandparents would have experienced once in their lifetime, will occur about once every 4 years in a 2°C warmer world. It will be the norm in a 4°C warmer world.
I like the clarity of this figure! :)
(3/n)
The second part of the figure shows similar changes for extreme precipitation and its antipode, drought.
Less explicit as for heat extremes, but still impressive (4/n)
Figure SPM.7 is also a beauty with a powerful message.
Land and ocean carbon sinks take up a smaller proportion of CO2 emissions when we emit more CO2.
(5/n)
As long as we increase emissions, the land and oceans will take up more CO2. This sounds like good news, but the bad news is in the donuts at the bottom that show that in relative terms sinks become weaker the more CO2 we emit and more CO2 remains in the atmosphere. (6/n)
The 8th figure then shows how components of our planet can respond very differently to global warming (panel a).
(7/n)
Arctic sea ice and ocean acidification (panels b and c) move almost in lock step with global warming and CO2 concentrations.
Global sea level rise is sluggish to respond (panel d) and continues to change for centuries once we give it a global warming push (panel e). (8/n)
The second-to-last figure shows that climate change as it can be experienced by you and me (that is, extreme heat, coastal erosion, river flooding, ... there's a long list) are projected to change in all regions around the globe.
And finally, last but not least, the 10th figure of the @IPCC_CH SPM tells us that every tonne of CO2 emissions adds to global warming.
It did so in the past (grey features on the left)
It will do so in the future (coloured ranges on the right)
(10/n)
How successful we will be in bringing global greenhouse gas emissions down by 2050 will determine whether we keep warming to 1.5°C or will then already suffer from a 2.5°C warmer planet.
(end)
As usual, if you want to read more: check out the @IPCC_CH AR6 WG1 report website
Carbon budgets tell us how much CO2 we can still emit while keeping warming below specific limits.
The latest @IPCC_CH report provides updated estimates of these budgets.
Here’s an insider's view with a deep dive looking at how they have changed since previous reports. (1/n)
I have been involved in the estimation of carbon budgets since the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report in early 2010s.
And since the first IPCC estimates published in 2013, we have learned a lot and have gotten much better at estimating remaining carbon budgets. (2/n)
The scientific basis underlying a carbon budget is our robust scientific understanding that global warming is near-linearly proportional to the total amount of CO2 we ever emit as a society.
This is shown in Fig. SPM10, both for the past and future projections. (3/n)
EXPLAINER: new projections for the next 5 years by @metoffice and @WMO indicate that there's a high chance that one of these years is 1.5°C warmer than average preindustrial levels.
The 1.5C level in the @metoffice announcement should not be confused with the 1.5C limit in the Paris Agreement.
The Paris targets refer to global warming - that is, the temperature increase of our planet once we smooth out important year-to-year variations (see👇)
(2/n)
Even in a stable climate, global temperatures differ from year to year because of noise in the climate system.
A detailed look at the report shows that @IEA has done a thorough job.
Modelling choices underpinning the pathway are well argued, reliance on speculative technologies is limited, and the carbon budget is in line with the most ambitious pathways available in the literature (2/n)
In addition, the report also presents a unique collaboration between two of the core flagship teams of @IEA: The World Energy Outlook and the Energy Technology Perspectives.
The @Science_Academy's analysis starts from carbon budgets reported in @IPCC_CH's 1.5°C Special Report's Table 2.2 (orig. below).
Then makes adjustments & updates.
Having had the pleasure to compile Table 2.2 for #SR15, let's compare and try to make sense of the numbers
(2/n)
The @Science_Academy's table starts from IPCC's 1.5C carbon budget for a 50% chance.
(Note1: the table quotes either a wrong likelihood or a wrong number, but that's a detail)
(Note2: IPCC Table 2.2 is in GtCO2, the table below in GtC. Multiply by 3.6 to convert to GtCO2)