Forecasts of the trend in global-mean temperature to 2100 arising from the scenarios of first-difference CO2 and peak fossil fuel

TL;DR

This study forecasts global temperature trends to 2100 based on two novel scenarios involving peak fossil fuel and first-difference CO2, suggesting a lower temperature rise than IPCC projections and implications for climate policy.

Contribution

It introduces two new scenarios not in IPCC models and develops statistically significant time-series models to forecast temperature trajectories to 2100.

Findings

Temperature is forecast to rise until 2023 then gently decrease.

Forecasted temperature rise is lower than IPCC RCP8.5 scenario.

Results imply less urgent need for preventative climate actions.

Abstract

Two future scenarios that are not explicitly in the range of scenarios (the Representative Concentration Pathway scenarios) utilised by the IPCC. These two scenarios are the emissions trend under peak fossil fuel (for example, Mohr et al., 2015); and the climate sensitivity determinable from the relationship between first-difference CO2 and temperature recently shown by Leggett and Ball (2015). This paper provides forecasts of a global surface temperature trajectory to 2100 resulting from the effect of these two scenarios. The time-series models developed both displayed high statistical significance and converged in their forecasts, so adding to the potential robustness of the findings. Under the effect of the combination of the peak fossil fuel and first-difference CO2 scenarios, we found that temperature is forecast to continue to rise, but only gently, until around 2023 where it reaches a level slightly higher than at present; and from then to display an also gentle steady decrease. It is shown that this trajectory is markedly lower than that generated by the IPCC business-as-usual level-of-CO2 (RCP8.5) model (Riahi et al. 2011). These lower results are evidence that the climate problem may require less future preventative action than is presently being considered necessary. If so, it is stressed that the same evidence is support for the case that the peak fossil fuel problem would require ameliorative action. This globally required action is the same as it would have been for climate (as embodied in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change of the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Paris adopted in 2015): the rapid transition to a predominantly renewable global energy system.