Modelling the climate response to greenhouse gas emissions: characteristics and policy implications

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A major advance in climate modelling over the last decade has been the incorporation of the carbon cycle into models. These "Earth system" or "coupled climate-carbon cycle models" represent the entire causal chain from carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to climate change, taking into account the interactions between climate and the carbon cycle. Recent studies with these models have shown that climate change caused by human-caused CO2 emissions may persist for many centuries even if emissions were to be halted at any point in time. Further, such studies have shown that the amount of future global warming is determined by the accumulated amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere. One implication of these findings is that climate targets, such as the widely advocated 2 C target, can be expressed in terms of accumulated carbon emissions.