Metrics for Emissions Removal Limits for Nature

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MERLiN is series of modelling studies designed to assess the limits of Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) effectiveness for prevention of climate change impacts, climate change reversibility, and the accounting of GGR. Global temperature rise is determined by cumulative emissions of CO2, with climate policy temperature targets corresponding to emissions budgets e.g. 2K = around 1000 Gt C emitted. GGR is suggested as a way of recapturing CO2 some time after it has been emitted such that the eventual net quantity emitted meets a temperature target budget. Current climate mitigation action appears reliant on future application of GGR in this role to meet the international climate warming targets of the UNFCCC Paris Agreement of less than 2K and ideally 1.5K warming. However, even if the same eventual budget is attained, it is expected that climate change impacts resulting from an emissions overshoot and later recapture pathway will be different to impacts associated with pathways in which no recapture is required. This difference in impacts sets limits to the contribution of GGR to avoiding dangerous climate change impacts. MERLiN is designed to determine these limits, and develop simple metrics relating the difference in committed climate change impacts to the amount and duration of emissions budget excess. MERLiN will also, with international collaborators, investigate climate change reversibility, and how the Earth system (in particular the carbon cycle) respond to GGR recapture of CO2. Here, different timescales in carbon cycle components create inertia whereby emission and later recapture of CO2 do not have equal (cancelling) temperature effect. This creates an accounting challenge for GGR which MERLiN will investigate and quantify.These results are crucial to informing policy choices and actions on GGR. Using MERLiN researcher's strong policy experience, MERLiN will translate and communicate its findings on climate change impact GGR limits, climate change reversibility, and GGR accounting to inform policy-makers on the implications for climate mitigation action, policies and mechanisms.