# Climate mitigation outcomes from China-led emission reductions toward global carbon neutrality

## TL;DR

The paper assesses how China's emission reduction goals could limit global warming to around 2°C by 2100 without relying heavily on future carbon removal technologies.

## Contribution

The study introduces a new global emission scenario aligned with China’s carbon neutrality pathway and quantifies its climate outcomes.

## Key findings

- Global temperature rise is projected to be 2.05°C by 2100 under the latest NDCs.
- The 2.0°C target is likely achievable without early extensive carbon removal technologies.
- Latest NDCs show long-term climate benefits but near-term adverse impacts compared to fixed 2023 emissions.

## Abstract

While many nations committed to the Paris Agreement have completed the second-round updates to their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), especially China’s dual carbon commitment, the specific climate outcomes of these latest NDCs remain uncertain. Here, we quantify the potential climate mitigation outcomes from these latest NDCs through ensemble simulations of an Earth System Model under a newly developed global emission scenario aligned with China’s carbon neutrality pathway. We project a global temperature rise of 2.05°C during 2081–2100 through the implementation of the latest NDCs, demonstrating a likely achievable 2.0°C target without early extensive carbon removal technologies. Moreover, our results demonstrate that the latest NDCs will yield significant long-term climate benefits while incurring adverse near-term impacts, revealing temporally asymmetric climate outcomes when compared to fixing anthropogenic emissions at 2023 levels. We believe this work is valuable for understanding more plausible future climate change, with particular relevance to the ongoing seventh assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This work quantifies the potential climate mitigation outcomes from the latest Nationally Determined Contributions under a newly-developed global emission scenario aligned with China’s carbon neutrality pathway, demonstrating a likely achievable 2.0°C target without early extensive carbon removal technologies.