Keeping warming to below 1.5C. Possible? And if so, how?
With the Paris Agreement, the world decided to pursue best efforts to limit warming to below 1.5C, partly because climate impacts around 2C are considered too risky and too high by many. This seminar will put a spotlight on the mitigation side, i.e. how much and how quickly would emissions need to be reduced to still have a chance of keeping or returning warming to below 1.5C relative to pre-industrial levels.
How does a roadmap towards a 1.5C future differ from one for 2C? How big is the task of negative emission technologies, such as biomass and CCS.
In this seminar Joeri Rogelj will present the latest scientific literature on 1.5C emission scenarios, abatement costs, mitigation technologies, and carbon budgets.
After Joeri Rogelj's presentation, Erwin Jackson, Deputy Director of the Climate Institute, will provide a debate contribution in regard to the Paris decision on 1.5C and Australian and international climate policy.
Presentation slides Joeri Rogelj 26 April 2016 Presentation slides Erwin Jackson 26 April 2016
Joeri Rogelj is a Research Scholar at the Energy Program of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), where he works on connecting insights from the geosciences with energy modelling and climate policy. He has published on emission scenarios, carbon budgets, climate change uncertainty, implications of near-term policy choices, and on trade-offs and synergies between air-pollution and climate policies. His current projects focus on connecting the natural sciences to the policy realm, and include the study of extremely low emission scenarios, the simultaneous achievement of multiple sustainability objectives, and the exploration of approaches that can foster integration of knowledge across disciplines.
Joeri holds a PhD in climate science from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and Master's degrees in Engineering and Development Studies from KU Leuven, Belgium. Before joining IIASA, he held research positions at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK, Germany) and as a post-doctoral researcher at ETH Zurich. Furthermore, his professional experience includes three years as a project engineer in the field of rural electrification and drinking water systems in Rwanda (Africa), among further stays in Colombia and Denmark.
We link here two of the papers discussed in the seminar.
1. Zero emission targets as long-term global goals for climate protection
by Joeri Rogelj, Michiel Schaeffer, Malte Meinshausen, Reto Knutti, Joseph Alcamo, Keywan Riahi1, and William Hare
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/10/105007/meta
2. Energy system transformations for limiting end-of-century warming to below 1.5 °C
Joeri Rogelj, Gunnar Luderer, Robert C. Pietzcker, Elmar Kriegler, Michiel Schaeffer, Volker Krey & Keywan Riahi
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n6/full/nclimate2572.html
(Please email Joeri Rogelj, if you would like to obtain a PDF copy).