Near-term transition and longer-term physical climate risks of greenhouse gas emissions pathways

Gambhir, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5079-4537, George, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2688-3388, McJeon, H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0348-5704, Arnell, N. W. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2691-4436, Bernie, D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3522-8921, Mittal, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4718-0064, Köberle, A. C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0328-4750, Lowe, J., Rogelj, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2056-9061 and Monteith, S. (2022) Near-term transition and longer-term physical climate risks of greenhouse gas emissions pathways. Nature Climate Change, 12. pp. 88-96. ISSN 1758-678X doi: 10.1038/s41558-021-01236-x

Abstract/Summary

Policy, business, finance and civil society stakeholders are increasingly looking to compare future emissions pathways across both their associated physical climate risks stemming from increasing temperatures, and their transition climate risks stemming from the shift to a low-carbon economy. Here we present an integrated framework to explore near term (to 2030) transition risks and longer term (to 2050) physical risks, globally and in specific regions, for a range of plausible greenhouse gas emissions and associated temperature pathways, spanning 1.5-4oC levels of long-term warming. By 2050, physical risks deriving from major heatwaves, agricultural drought, heat stress and crop duration reductions depend greatly on the temperature pathway. By 2030, transition risks most sensitive to temperature pathways stem from economy-wide mitigation costs, carbon price increases, fossil fuel demand reductions and coal plant capacity reductions. Considering several pathways with a 2oC target demonstrates that transition risks also depend on technological, policy and socio-economic factors.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/101855
Identification Number/DOI	10.1038/s41558-021-01236-x
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
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