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Net-zero approaches must consider Earth system impacts to achieve climate goals
Commitments to net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) or greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions targets now cover 88% of countries’ emissions. Underlying the accounting behind net-zero frameworks is the assumption that emissions ...
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Open AccessAccounting for the climate benefit of temporary carbon storage in nature
Nature-based climate solutions can contribute to climate mitigation, but the vulnerability of land carbon to disturbances means that efforts to slow or reverse land carbon loss could result in only temporary s...
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Increased transparency is needed for corporate science-based targets to be effective
Companies rarely disclose underlying calculations for their science-based emission reduction targets and the targets themselves lack important details. Increased transparency is necessary to assess justice imp...
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Renewable energy certificates allow companies to overstate their emission reductions
Many companies purchase renewable energy certificates to report reduced emissions, but this may not lead to actual emission reductions. We need emission accounting that is both accurate and that incentivizes c...
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Renewable energy certificates threaten the integrity of corporate science-based targets
Current greenhouse gas accounting standards allow companies to use renewable energy certificates (RECs) to report reductions in emissions from purchased electricity (scope 2) as progress towards meeting their ...
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Open AccessTemporary nature-based carbon removal can lower peak warming in a well-below 2 °C scenario
Meeting the Paris Agreement’s climate objectives will require the world to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions around or before mid-century. Nature-based climate solutions, which aim to preserve and enhance carbon sto...
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Asymmetry in the climate–carbon cycle response to positive and negative CO2 emissions
Negative CO2 emissions are a key mitigation measure in emission scenarios consistent with temperature limits adopted by the Paris Agreement. It is commonly assumed that the climate–carbon cycle response to a nega...
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Open AccessAn integrated approach to quantifying uncertainties in the remaining carbon budget
The remaining carbon budget quantifies the future CO2 emissions to limit global warming below a desired level. Carbon budgets are subject to uncertainty in the Transient Climate Response to Cumulative CO2 Emissio...
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Opportunities and challenges in using remaining carbon budgets to guide climate policy
The remaining carbon budget represents the total amount of CO2 that can still be emitted in the future while limiting global warming to a given temperature target. Remaining carbon budget estimates range widely, ...
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Climate change impacts on potential future ranges of non-human primate species
Climate change is likely to negatively affect the habitats of non-human primate species. Recent research has identified a near-linear relationship between cumulative CO2 emissions, and the resulting regional and ...
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Open AccessNon-CO2 forcing changes will likely decrease the remaining carbon budget for 1.5 °C
One key contribution to the wide range of 1.5 °C carbon budgets among recent studies is the non-CO2 climate forcing scenario uncertainty. Based on a partitioning of historical non-CO2 forcing, we show that curren...
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Recommended temperature metrics for carbon budget estimates, model evaluation and climate policy
Recent estimates of the amount of carbon dioxide that can still be emitted while achieving the Paris Agreement temperature goals are larger than previously thought. One potential reason for these larger estima...
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Open AccessExposure to excessive heat and impacts on labour productivity linked to cumulative CO2 emissions
Cumulative CO2 emissions are a robust predictor of mean temperature increase. However, many societal impacts are driven by exposure to extreme weather conditions. Here, we show that cumulative emissions can be ro...
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Author Correction: Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C
In the version of this Article originally published, a coding error resulted in the erroneous inclusion of a subset of RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 simulations in the sets used for RCP2.6 and RCP6, respectively, leading ...
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Open Access1.5 °C carbon budget dependent on carbon cycle uncertainty and future non-CO2 forcing
Estimates of the 1.5 °C carbon budget vary widely among recent studies, emphasizing the need to better understand and quantify key sources of uncertainty. Here we quantify the impact of carbon cycle uncertaint...
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Reply to ‘Interpretations of the Paris climate target’
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Emission budgets and pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C
The Paris Agreement has opened debate on whether limiting warming to 1.5 °C is compatible with current emission pledges and warming of about 0.9 °C from the mid-nineteenth century to the present decade. We sho...
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Estimating Carbon Budgets for Ambitious Climate Targets
Carbon budgets, which define the total allowable CO2 emissions associated with a given global climate target, are a useful way of framing the climate mitigation challenge. In this paper, we review the geophysical...
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Regional estimates of the transient climate response to cumulative CO2 emissions
An analysis of the regional climate response to cumulative CO2 emissions establishes a clear quantitative link between the total amount of CO2 emitted and the magnitude of local climate warming.
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A Global-Scale Evaluation of Primate Exposure and Vulnerability to Climate Change
Human-induced climate change poses many potential threats to nonhuman primate species, many of which are already threatened by human activities such as deforestation, hunting, and the exotic pet trade. Here, w...
