Investigating climate tipping points under various emission reduction and carbon capture scenarios with a stochastic climate model

TL;DR

This paper models climate tipping points using a stochastic delay differential equation to analyze how emission reduction and carbon capture strategies can prevent abrupt temperature increases beyond critical CO2 levels.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled stochastic climate model with a rigorous upper bound for CO2 growth, enabling assessment of mitigation strategies to avoid tipping points.

Findings

Critical CO2 threshold identified at around 478ppm.

Transient CO2 growth can trigger tipping points even with eventual decay.

Mitigation scenarios can be evaluated using the derived upper bounds and Monte Carlo simulations.

Abstract

We study the mitigation of climate tipping point transitions using an energy balance model. The evolution of the global mean surface temperature is coupled with the CO2 concentration through the green house effect. We model the CO2 concentration with a stochastic delay differential equation (SDDE), accounting for various carbon emission and capture scenarios. The resulting coupled system of SDDEs exhibits a tipping point phenomena: if CO2 concentration exceeds a critical threshold (around 478ppm), the temperature experiences an abrupt increase of about six degrees Celsius. We show that the CO2 concentration exhibits a transient growth which may cause a climate tipping point, even if the concentration decays asymptotically. We derive a rigorous upper bound for the CO2 evolution which quantifies its transient and asymptotic growths, and provides sufficient conditions for evading the climate tipping point. Combining this upper bound with Monte Carlo simulations of the stochastic climate model, we investigate the emission reduction and carbon capture scenarios that would avert the tipping point.