Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 16
  • Item
    The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: An overview
    (Amsterdam : Elsevier, 2016) Riahi, Keywan; van Vuuren, Detlef P.; Kriegler, Elmar; Edmonds, Jae; O’Neill, Brian C.; Fujimori, Shinichiro; Bauer, Nico; Calvin, Katherine; Dellink, Rob; Fricko, Oliver; Lutz, Wolfgang; Popp, Alexander; Crespo Cuaresma, Jesus; KC, Samir; Leimbach, Marian; Jiang, Leiwen; Kram, Tom; Rao, Shilpa; Emmerling, Johannes; Ebi, Kristie; Hasegawa, Tomoko; Havlik, Petr; Humpenöder, Florian; Aleluia Da Silva, Lara; Smith, Steve; Stehfest, Elke; Bosetti, Valentina; Eom, Jiyong; Gernaat, David; Masui, Toshihiko; Rogelj, Joeri; Strefler, Jessica; Drouet, Laurent; Krey, Volker; Luderer, Gunnar; Harmsen, Mathijs; Takahashi, Kiyoshi; Baumstark, Lavinia; Doelman, Jonathan C.; Kainuma, Mikiko; Klimont, Zbigniew; Marangoni, Giacomo; Lotze-Campen, Hermann; Obersteiner, Michael; Tabeau, Andrzej; Tavoni, Massimo
    This paper presents the overview of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and their energy, land use, and emissions implications. The SSPs are part of a new scenario framework, established by the climate change research community in order to facilitate the integrated analysis of future climate impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation, and mitigation. The pathways were developed over the last years as a joint community effort and describe plausible major global developments that together would lead in the future to different challenges for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The SSPs are based on five narratives describing alternative socio-economic developments, including sustainable development, regional rivalry, inequality, fossil-fueled development, and middle-of-the-road development. The long-term demographic and economic projections of the SSPs depict a wide uncertainty range consistent with the scenario literature. A multi-model approach was used for the elaboration of the energy, land-use and the emissions trajectories of SSP-based scenarios. The baseline scenarios lead to global energy consumption of 400–1200 EJ in 2100, and feature vastly different land-use dynamics, ranging from a possible reduction in cropland area up to a massive expansion by more than 700 million hectares by 2100. The associated annual CO2 emissions of the baseline scenarios range from about 25 GtCO2 to more than 120 GtCO2 per year by 2100. With respect to mitigation, we find that associated costs strongly depend on three factors: (1) the policy assumptions, (2) the socio-economic narrative, and (3) the stringency of the target. The carbon price for reaching the target of 2.6 W/m2 that is consistent with a temperature change limit of 2 Â°C, differs in our analysis thus by about a factor of three across the SSP marker scenarios. Moreover, many models could not reach this target from the SSPs with high mitigation challenges. While the SSPs were designed to represent different mitigation and adaptation challenges, the resulting narratives and quantifications span a wide range of different futures broadly representative of the current literature. This allows their subsequent use and development in new assessments and research projects. Critical next steps for the community scenario process will, among others, involve regional and sectoral extensions, further elaboration of the adaptation and impacts dimension, as well as employing the SSP scenarios with the new generation of earth system models as part of the 6th climate model intercomparison project (CMIP6).
  • Item
    Future air pollution in the Shared Socio-economic Pathways
    (Amsterdam : Elsevier, 2016) Rao, Shilpa; Klimont, Zbigniew; Smith, Steven J.; Van Dingenen, Rita; Dentener, Frank; Bouwman, Lex; Riahi, Keywan; Amann, Markus; Bodirsky, Benjamin Leon; van Vuuren, Detlef P.; Aleluia Reis, Lara; Calvin, Katherine; Drouet, Laurent; Fricko, Oliver; Fujimori, Shinichiro; Gernaat, David; Havlik, Petr; Harmsen, Mathijs; Hasegawa, Tomoko; Heyes, Chris; Hilaire, Jérôme; Luderer, Gunnar; Masui, Toshihiko; Stehfest, Elke; Strefler, Jessica; van der Sluis, Sietske; Tavoni, Massimo
    Emissions of air pollutants such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides and particulates have significant health impacts as well as effects on natural and anthropogenic ecosystems. These same emissions also can change atmospheric chemistry and the planetary energy balance, thereby impacting global and regional climate. Long-term scenarios for air pollutant emissions are needed as inputs to global climate and chemistry models, and for analysis linking air pollutant impacts across sectors. In this paper we present methodology and results for air pollutant emissions in Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios. We first present a set of three air pollution narratives that describe high, central, and low pollution control ambitions over the 21st century. These narratives are then translated into quantitative guidance for use in integrated assessment models. The resulting pollutant emission trajectories under the SSP scenarios cover a wider range than the scenarios used in previous international climate model comparisons. In the SSP3 and SSP4 scenarios, where economic, institutional and technological limitations slow air quality improvements, global pollutant emissions over the 21st century can be comparable to current levels. Pollutant emissions in the SSP1 scenarios fall to low levels due to the assumption of technological advances and successful global action to control emissions.
  • Item
    Case studies of the wind field around Ny-Ã…lesund, Svalbard, using unmanned aircraft
    (London : Taylor & Francis, 2022) Schön, Martin; Suomi, Irene; Altstädter, Barbara; van Kesteren, Bram; zum Berge, Kjell; Platis, Andreas; Wehner, Birgit; Lampert, Astrid; Bange, Jens
    The wind field in Arctic fjords is strongly influenced by glaciers, local orography and the interaction between sea and land. Ny-Ã…lesund, an important location for atmospheric research in the Arctic, is located in Kongsfjorden, a fjord with a complex local wind field that influences measurements in Ny-Ã…lesund. Using wind measurements from UAS (unmanned aircraft systems), ground measurements, radiosonde and reanalysis data, characteristic processes that determine the wind field around Ny-Ã…lesund are identified and analysed. UAS measurements and ground measurements show, as did previous studies, a south-east flow along Kongsfjorden, dominating the wind conditions in Ny-Ã…lesund. The wind measured by the UAS in a valley 1 km west of Ny-Ã…lesund differs from the wind measured at the ground in Ny-Ã…lesund. In this valley, we identify a small-scale catabatic flow from the south to south-west as the cause for this difference. Case studies show a backing (counterclockwise rotation with increasing altitude) of the wind direction close to the ground. A katabatic flow is measured near the ground, with a horizontal wind speed up to 5 m s-1. Both the larger-scale south-east flow along the fjord and the local katabatic flows lead to a highly variable wind field, so ground measurements and weather models alone give an incomplete picture. The comparison of UAS measurements, ground measurements and weather conditions analysis using a synoptic model is used to show that the effects measured in the case studies play a role in the Ny-Ã…lesund wind field in spring.
  • Item
    Impacts of enhanced weathering on biomass production for negative emission technologies and soil hydrology
    (Katlenburg-Lindau [u.a.] : Copernicus, 2020) De Oliveira Garcia, Wagner; Amann, Thorben; Hartmann, Jens; Karstens, Kristine; Popp, Alexander; Boysen, Lena R.; Smith, Pete; Goll, Daniel
    Limiting global mean temperature changes to well below 2 °C likely requires a rapid and large-scale deployment of negative emission technologies (NETs). Assessments so far have shown a high potential of biomass-based terrestrial NETs, but only a few assessments have included effects of the commonly found nutrient-deficient soils on biomass production. Here, we investigate the deployment of enhanced weathering (EW) to supply nutrients to areas of afforestation-reforestation and naturally growing forests (AR) and bioenergy grasses (BG) that are deficient in phosphorus (P), besides the impacts on soil hydrology. Using stoichiometric ratios and biomass estimates from two established vegetation models, we calculated the nutrient demand of AR and BG. Insufficient geogenic P supply limits C storage in biomass. For a mean P demand by AR and a lowgeogenic-P-supply scenario, AR would sequester 119 Gt C in biomass; for a high-geogenic-P-supply and low-AR-Pdemand scenario, 187 Gt C would be sequestered in biomass; and for a low geogenic P supply and high AR P demand, only 92 GtC would be accumulated by biomass. An average amount of ∼ 150 Gt basalt powder applied for EW would be needed to close global P gaps and completely sequester projected amounts of 190 Gt C during the years 2006-2099 for the mean AR P demand scenario (2-362 Gt basalt powder for the low-AR-P-demand and for the high-AR-P-demand scenarios would be necessary, respectively). The average potential of carbon sequestration by EW until 2099 is ∼ 12 GtC (∼ 0:2-∼ 27 Gt C) for the specified scenarios (excluding additional carbon sequestration via alkalinity production). For BG, 8 kg basaltm2 a1 might, on average, replenish the exported potassium (K) and P by harvest. Using pedotransfer functions, we show that the impacts of basalt powder application on soil hydraulic conductivity and plant-Available water, to close predicted P gaps, would depend on basalt and soil texture, but in general the impacts are marginal. We show that EW could potentially close the projected P gaps of an AR scenario and nutrients exported by BG harvest, which would decrease or replace the use of industrial fertilizers. Besides that, EW ameliorates the soil's capacity to retain nutrients and soil pH and replenish soil nutrient pools. Lastly, EW application could improve plant-Available-water capacity depending on deployed amounts of rock powder - adding a new dimension to the coupling of land-based biomass NETs with EW. © 2020 Royal Society of Chemistry. All rights reserved.
  • Item
    Management-induced changes in soil organic carbon on global croplands
    (Katlenburg-Lindau [u.a.] : Copernicus, 2022) Karstens, Kristine; Bodirsky, Benjamin Leon; Dietrich, Jan Philipp; Dondini, Marta; Heinke, Jens; Kuhnert, Matthias; Müller, Christoph; Rolinski, Susanne; Smith, Pete; Weindl, Isabelle; Lotze-Campen, Hermann; Popp, Alexander
    Soil organic carbon (SOC), one of the largest terrestrial carbon (C) stocks on Earth, has been depleted by anthropogenic land cover change and agricultural management. However, the latter has so far not been well represented in global C stock assessments. While SOC models often simulate detailed biochemical processes that lead to the accumulation and decay of SOC, the management decisions driving these biophysical processes are still little investigated at the global scale. Here we develop a spatially explicit data set for agricultural management on cropland, considering crop production levels, residue returning rates, manure application, and the adoption of irrigation and tillage practices. We combine it with a reduced-complexity model based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tier 2 method to create a half-degree resolution data set of SOC stocks and SOC stock changes for the first 30 cm of mineral soils. We estimate that, due to arable farming, soils have lost around 34.6 GtC relative to a counterfactual hypothetical natural state in 1975. Within the period 1975-2010, this SOC debt continued to expand by 5 GtC (0.14 GtCyr-1) to around 39.6 GtC. However, accounting for historical management led to 2.1 GtC fewer (0.06 GtCyr-1) emissions than under the assumption of constant management. We also find that management decisions have influenced the historical SOC trajectory most strongly by residue returning, indicating that SOC enhancement by biomass retention may be a promising negative emissions technique. The reduced-complexity SOC model may allow us to simulate management-induced SOC enhancement - also within computationally demanding integrated (land use) assessment modeling.
  • Item
    Fossil-fueled development (SSP5): An energy and resource intensive scenario for the 21st century
    (Amsterdam : Elsevier, 2016) Kriegler, Elmar; Bauer, Nico; Popp, Alexander; Humpenöder, Florian; Leimbach, Marian; Strefler, Jessica; Baumstark, Lavinia; Bodirsky, Benjamin Leon; Hilaire, Jérôme; Klein, David; Mouratiadou, Ioanna; Weindl, Isabelle; Bertram, Christoph; Dietrich, Jan-Philipp; Luderer, Gunnar; Pehl, Michaja; Pietzcker, Robert; Piontek, Franziska; Lotze-Campen, Hermann; Biewald, Anne; Bonsch, Markus; Giannousakis, Anastasis; Kreidenweis, Ulrich; Müller, Christoph; Rolinski, Susanne; Schultes, Anselm; Schwanitz, Jana; Stevanovic, Miodrag; Calvin, Katherine; Emmerling, Johannes; Fujimori, Shinichiro; Edenhofer, Ottmar
    This paper presents a set of energy and resource intensive scenarios based on the concept of Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs). The scenario family is characterized by rapid and fossil-fueled development with high socio-economic challenges to mitigation and low socio-economic challenges to adaptation (SSP5). A special focus is placed on the SSP5 marker scenario developed by the REMIND-MAgPIE integrated assessment modeling framework. The SSP5 baseline scenarios exhibit very high levels of fossil fuel use, up to a doubling of global food demand, and up to a tripling of energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions over the course of the century, marking the upper end of the scenario literature in several dimensions. These scenarios are currently the only SSP scenarios that result in a radiative forcing pathway as high as the highest Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP8.5). This paper further investigates the direct impact of mitigation policies on the SSP5 energy, land and emissions dynamics confirming high socio-economic challenges to mitigation in SSP5. Nonetheless, mitigation policies reaching climate forcing levels as low as in the lowest Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP2.6) are accessible in SSP5. The SSP5 scenarios presented in this paper aim to provide useful reference points for future climate change, climate impact, adaption and mitigation analysis, and broader questions of sustainable development.
  • Item
    Sedimentological processes and environmental variability at Lake Ohrid (Macedonia, Albania) between 637 ka and the present
    (Katlenburg-Lindau : European Geosciences Union, 2016) Francke, Alexander; Wagner, Bernd; Just, Janna; Leicher, Niklas; Gromig, Raphael; Baumgarten, Henrike; Vogel, Hendrik; Lacey, Jack H.; Sadori, Laura; Wonik, Thomas; Leng, Melanie J.; Zanchetta, Giovanni; Sulpizio, Roberto; Giaccio, Biagio
    Lake Ohrid (Macedonia, Albania) is thought to be more than 1.2 million years old and host more than 300 endemic species. As a target of the International Continental scientific Drilling Program (ICDP), a successful deep drilling campaign was carried out within the scope of the Scientific Collaboration on Past Speciation Conditions in Lake Ohrid (SCOPSCO) project in 2013. Here, we present lithological, sedimentological, and (bio-)geochemical data from the upper 247.8 m composite depth of the overall 569 m long DEEP site sediment succession from the central part of the lake. According to an age model, which is based on 11 tephra layers (first-order tie points) and on tuning of bio-geochemical proxy data to orbital parameters (second-order tie points), the analyzed sediment sequence covers the last 637 kyr. The DEEP site sediment succession consists of hemipelagic sediments, which are interspersed by several tephra layers and infrequent, thin (< 5 cm) mass wasting deposits. The hemipelagic sediments can be classified into three different lithotypes. Lithotype 1 and 2 deposits comprise calcareous and slightly calcareous silty clay and are predominantly attributed to interglacial periods with high primary productivity in the lake during summer and reduced mixing during winter. The data suggest that high ion and nutrient concentrations in the lake water promoted calcite precipitation and diatom growth in the epilimnion during MIS15, 13, and 5. Following a strong primary productivity, highest interglacial temperatures can be reported for marine isotope stages (MIS) 11 and 5, whereas MIS15, 13, 9, and 7 were comparably cooler. Lithotype 3 deposits consist of clastic, silty clayey material and predominantly represent glacial periods with low primary productivity during summer and longer and intensified mixing during winter. The data imply that the most severe glacial conditions at Lake Ohrid persisted during MIS16, 12, 10, and 6, whereas somewhat warmer temperatures can be inferred for MIS14, 8, 4, and 2. Interglacial-like conditions occurred during parts of MIS14 and 8. © Author(s) 2016.
  • Item
    Ice roads through lake-rich Arctic watersheds : Integrating climate uncertainty and freshwater habitat responses into adaptive management
    (London : Taylor & Francis Group, 2019) Arp, Christopher D.; Whitman, Matthew S.; Jones, Benjamin M.; Nigro, D.A.; Alexeev, Vladimir; Gädeke, Anne; Fritz, Stacey; Daanen, Ronald; Liljedahl, Anna K.; Adams, F.J.; Gaglioti, Benjamin V.; Grosse, Guido; Heim, Kurt C.; Beaver, R.; Cai, Lei; Engram, Melanie; Uher-Koch, Hannah R.
    Vast mosaics of lakes, wetlands, and rivers on the Arctic Coastal Plain give the impression of water surplus. Yet long winters lock freshwater resources in ice, limiting freshwater habitats and water supply for human uses. Increasingly the petroleum industry relies on lakes to build temporary ice roads for winter oil exploration. Permitting water withdrawal for ice roads in Arctic Alaska is dependent on lake depth, ice thickness, and the fish species present. Recent winter warming suggests that more winter water will be available for ice- road construction, yet high interannual variability in ice thickness and summer precipitation complicates habitat impact assessments. To address these concerns, multidisciplinary researchers are working to understand how Arctic freshwater habitats are responding to changes in both climate and water use in northern Alaska. The dynamics of habitat availability and connectivity are being linked to how food webs support fish and waterbirds across diverse freshwater habitats. Moving toward watershed-scale habitat classification coupled with scenario analysis of climate extremes and water withdrawal is increasingly relevant to future resource management decisions in this region. Such progressive refinement in understanding responses to change provides an example of adaptive management focused on ensuring responsible resource development in the Arctic. © 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
  • Item
    Future growth patterns of world regions – A GDP scenario approach
    (Amsterdam : Elsevier, 2015) Leimbach, Marian; Kriegler, Elmar; Roming, Niklas; Schwanitz, Jana
    Global GDP projections for the 21st century are needed for the exploration of long-term global environmental problems, in particular climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions as well as climate change mitigation and adaption capacities strongly depend on growth of per capita income. However, long-term economic projections are highly uncertain. This paper provides five new long-term economic scenarios as part of the newly developed shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) which represent a set of widely diverging narratives. A method of GDP scenario building is presented that is based on assumptions about technological progress, and human and physical capital formation as major drivers of long-term GDP per capita growth. The impact of these drivers differs significantly between different shared socio-economic pathways and is traced back to the underlying narratives and the associated population and education scenarios. In a highly fragmented world, technological and knowledge spillovers are low. Hence, the growth impact of technological progress and human capital is comparatively low, and per capita income diverges between world regions. These factors play a much larger role in globalization scenarios, leading to higher economic growth and stronger convergence between world regions. At the global average, per capita GDP is projected to grow annually in a range between 1.0% (SSP3) and 2.8% (SSP5) from 2010 to 2100. While this covers a large portion of variety in future global economic growth projections, plausible lower and higher growth projections may still be conceivable. The GDP projections are put into the context of historic patterns of economic growth (stylized facts), and their sensitivity to key assumptions is explored.
  • Item
    Understanding the uncertainty in global forest carbon turnover
    (Katlenburg-Lindau [u.a.] : Copernicus, 2020) Pugh, Thomas A.M.; Rademacher, Tim; Shafer, Sarah L.; Steinkamp, Jörg; Barichivich, Jonathan; Beckage, Brian; Haverd, Vanessa; Harper, Anna; Heinke, Jens; Nishina, Kazuya; Rammig, Anja; Sato, Hisashi; Arneth, Almut; Hantson, Stijn; Hickler, Thomas; Kautz, Markus; Quesada, Benjamin; Smith, Benjamin; Thonicke, Kirsten
    The length of time that carbon remains in forest biomass is one of the largest uncertainties in the global carbon cycle, with both recent historical baselines and future responses to environmental change poorly constrained by available observations. In the absence of large-scale observations, models used for global assessments tend to fall back on simplified assumptions of the turnover rates of biomass and soil carbon pools. In this study, the biomass carbon turnover times calculated by an ensemble of contemporary terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs) are analysed to assess their current capability to accurately estimate biomass carbon turnover times in forests and how these times are anticipated to change in the future. Modelled baseline 1985-2014 global average forest biomass turnover times vary from 12.2 to 23.5 years between TBMs. TBM differences in phenological processes, which control allocation to, and turnover rate of, leaves and fine roots, are as important as tree mortality with regard to explaining the variation in total turnover among TBMs. The different governing mechanisms exhibited by each TBM result in a wide range of plausible turnover time projections for the end of the century. Based on these simulations, it is not possible to draw robust conclusions regarding likely future changes in turnover time, and thus biomass change, for different regions. Both spatial and temporal uncertainty in turnover time are strongly linked to model assumptions concerning plant functional type distributions and their controls. Thirteen model-based hypotheses of controls on turnover time are identified, along with recommendations for pragmatic steps to test them using existing and novel observations. Efforts to resolve uncertainty in turnover time, and thus its impacts on the future evolution of biomass carbon stocks across the world's forests, will need to address both mortality and establishment components of forest demography, as well as allocation of carbon to woody versus non-woody biomass growth. © 2020 SPIE. All rights reserved.