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    Between Scylla and Charybdis: Delayed mitigation narrows the passage between large-scale CDR and high costs
    (Bristol : IOP Publishing, 2018) Strefler, Jessica; Bauer, Nico; Kriegler, Elmar; Popp, Alexander; Giannousakis, Anastasis; Edenhofer, Ottmar
    There are major concerns about the sustainability of large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies. It is therefore an urgent question to what extent CDR will be needed to implement the long term ambition of the Paris Agreement. Here we show that ambitious near term mitigation significantly decreases CDR requirements to keep the Paris climate targets within reach. Following the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) until 2030 makes 2 °C unachievable without CDR. Reducing 2030 emissions by 20% below NDC levels alleviates the trade-off between high transitional challenges and high CDR deployment. Nevertheless, transitional challenges increase significantly if CDR is constrained to less than 5 Gt CO2 a−1 in any year. At least 8 Gt CO2 a−1 CDR are necessary in the long term to achieve 1.5 °C and more than 15 Gt CO2 a−1 to keep transitional challenges in bounds.
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    The role of storage dynamics in annual wheat prices
    (Bristol : IOP Publishing, 2017) Schewe, Jacob; Otto, Christian; Frieler, Katja; Bodirsky, Benjamin Leo; Kriegler, Elmar; Lotze-Campen, Hermann; Popp, Alexander
    Identifying the drivers of global crop price fluctuations is essential for estimating the risks of unexpected weather-induced production shortfalls and for designing optimal response measures. Here we show that with a consistent representation of storage dynamics, a simple supply–demand model can explain most of the observed variations in wheat prices over the last 40 yr solely based on time series of annual production and long term demand trends. Even the most recent price peaks in 2007/08 and 2010/11 can be explained by additionally accounting for documented changes in countries' trade policies and storage strategies, without the need for external drivers such as oil prices or speculation across different commodity or stock markets. This underlines the critical sensitivity of global prices to fluctuations in production. The consistent inclusion of storage into a dynamic supply-demand model closes an important gap when it comes to exploring potential responses to future crop yield variability under climate and land-use change.
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    Global consequences of afforestation and bioenergy cultivation on ecosystem service indicators
    (München : European Geopyhsical Union, 2017) Krause, Andreas; Pugh, Thomas A.M.; Bayer, Anita D.; Doelman, Jonathan C.; Humpenöder, Florian; Anthoni, Peter; Olin, Stefan; Bodirsky, Benjamin L.; Popp, Alexander; Stehfest, Elke; Arneth, Almut
    Land management for carbon storage is discussed as being indispensable for climate change mitigation because of its large potential to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and to avoid further emissions from deforestation. However, the acceptance and feasibility of land-based mitigation projects depends on potential side effects on other important ecosystem functions and their services. Here, we use projections of future land use and land cover for different land-based mitigation options from two land-use models (IMAGE and MAgPIE) and evaluate their effects with a global dynamic vegetation model (LPJ-GUESS). In the land-use models, carbon removal was achieved either via growth of bioenergy crops combined with carbon capture and storage, via avoided deforestation and afforestation, or via a combination of both. We compare these scenarios to a reference scenario without land-based mitigation and analyse the LPJ-GUESS simulations with the aim of assessing synergies and trade-offs across a range of ecosystem service indicators: carbon storage, surface albedo, evapotranspiration, water runoff, crop production, nitrogen loss, and emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds. In our mitigation simulations cumulative carbon storage by year 2099 ranged between 55 and 89 GtC. Other ecosystem service indicators were influenced heterogeneously both positively and negatively, with large variability across regions and land-use scenarios. Avoided deforestation and afforestation led to an increase in evapotranspiration and enhanced emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds, and to a decrease in albedo, runoff, and nitrogen loss. Crop production could also decrease in the afforestation scenarios as a result of reduced crop area, especially for MAgPIE land-use patterns, if assumed increases in crop yields cannot be realized. Bioenergy-based climate change mitigation was projected to affect less area globally than in the forest expansion scenarios, and resulted in less pronounced changes in most ecosystem service indicators than forest-based mitigation, but included a possible decrease in nitrogen loss, crop production, and biogenic volatile organic compounds emissions.