Spatial patterns of the climate response to cumulative emissions

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The Paris Climate Agreement has articulated the challenge of climate mitigation and emphasized the need to limit global temperature increases to between 1.5 and 2C above pre-industrial temperatures. Meeting this very ambitious goal will require concerted and sustained efforts to decrease greenhouse gas emissions so as to minimize the risks of dangerous levels of climate change. These efforts must be informed by a sound scientific understanding of how the climate system will respond to human greenhouse gas emissions, and what level of emissions are consistent with the climate targets that have been adopted in the Paris Agreement. My proposed research program focuses on cumulative emissions as a key metric to understand and quantify the climate response to anthropogenic emissions. Recent research has shown that global temperature responds linearly to cumulative CO2 emissions, which provides a simple yet powerful framework within which to predict climate impacts, and define the allowable emissions associated with global climate targets. I propose to expand this cumulative emissions framework by incorporating new information about the spatial patterns of climate change, which will allow both global and regional climate changes to be estimated as a function of cumulative CO2 and other greenhouse emissions. This will represent an important step forward from the current global to a new regional analysis of the climate response to cumulative emissions, and has the potential to lead to new and critically-needed quantitative links between anthropogenic emissions and the changes in local climate that are of direct relevance to the anticipated impacts, loss and damages that will manifest in a warming world. The overall objective of this research program is therefore to expand and develop our understanding of the climate system response to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions, with the aim of building coherent and quantitative relationships between global greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting local and regional climate impacts. This research is critically needed to support the objectives of the Paris Agreement and to inform climate mitigation efforts seeking to avoid dangerous levels of climate change over the coming century.