Bringing it all together: science priorities for improved understanding of Earth system change and to support international climate policy
Abstract
We review how the international modelling community, encompassing integrated assessment models, global and regional Earth system and climate models, and impact models, has worked together over the past few decades to advance understanding of Earth system change and its impacts on society and the environment and thereby support international climate policy. We go on to recommend a number of priority research areas for the coming decade, a timescale that encompasses a number of newly starting international modelling activities, as well as the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) and the second UNFCCC Global Stocktake. Progress in these priority areas will significantly advance our understanding of Earth system change and its impacts, increasing the quality and utility of science support to climate policy.
We emphasize the need for continued improvement in our understanding of, and ability to simulate, the coupled Earth system and the impacts of Earth system change. There is an urgent need to investigate plausible pathways and emission scenarios that realize the Paris climate targets -for example, pathways that overshoot 1.5 or 2 °C global warming, before returning to these levels at some later date. Earth system models need to be capable of thoroughly assessing such warming overshoots -in particular, the efficacy of mitigation measures, such as negative CO 2 emissions, in reducing atmospheric CO 2 and driving global cooling. An improved assessment of the long-term consequences of stabilizing climate at 1.5 or 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures is also required. We recommend Earth system models run overshoot scenarios in CO 2 -emission mode to more fully represent coupled climate-carbon-cycle feedbacks and, wherever possible, interactively simulate other key
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