al. Please send comments or suggestions on accessibility to the site editor. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and New York, NY, USA. Figure 1. Others involve the quantity of gases emitted, using energy system models to simulate different scenarios of future emissions. Each RCP is based on a scenario from the literature that includes a socio-economic development pathway. The RCP4.5 and RCP6.0 scenarios stabilize after 2100 at 4.2 W / m2 and 6.0 W / m2, respectively. Contact Us, Privacy & Legal Statements | Copyright Information Forcing level (W/m 2) 8.5 6.0 4.5 2.6 SSP1 SSP2 SSP3 Shared Socio-economic Pathways SSP4 SSP5 Different socioeconomic pathways, but climate “consistent” with RCP 4.5 Even in the best case of the SRES scenarios, B1, we will likely reach twice pre-industrial levels (i.e., around 550 ppm) by 2100. What are the major differences between the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) and the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP)? In all RCPs global population levels off or starts to decline by 2100, with a peak value of 12 billion in RCP8.5. Non-SRES Scenario: 1PTO4X (1% to quadruple) Experiments run with greenhouse gasses increasing from pre-industrial levels at a rate of 1% per year until the concentration has quadrupled and held constant thereafter. The RCP 4.5 scenario is a stabilization scenario, which means the radiative forcing level stabilizes at 4.5 W/m 2 before 2100 by employment of a range of technologies and strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. RCP 2.6 is a "very stringent" pathway. While some of the scenarios involve storylines that embrace generic notions of sustainability and environmental protection, the scenarios do not envision explicit attempts to stabilize CO 2 concentrations at any particular level. You might wonder, what scenario do we actually appear to be following? Meinshausen, M., Smith, S.J., Calvin, K et al. This future is … Each of these processes can be simulated in a climate model. A set of scenarios referred to as Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) are in common use to study future climate change. Meinshausen, M., Smith, S.J., Calvin, K et al. To better appreciate the worlds that the RCP scenarios are based on, I have excerpted below the “storylines” for the emission scenarios used in the 2007 IPCC report (AR4). The figures below show how historical emissions (black line) compare to the four RCP scenarios as well as the older SRES and IS92 scenarios. Cambridge University Press, UK. ERF Second, there is an And to keep CO 2 concentrations below this level, we can see that we have to bring emissions to a peak by 2040, and ramp them down to less than half current levels by 2100. There are four pathways: RCP8.5, RCP6, RCP4.5 and RCP2.6 - the last is also referred to as RCP3-PD. They begin with a set of storylines model results, it is preferable to use a common set of scenarios across the scientific community. You might wonder, what scenario do we actually appear to be following? Comparison of carbon dioxide concentrations for the 21st century from the RCPs and SRES scenarios. With all of these scenarios, stabilizing CO2 concentrations requires not just preventing the increase of emissions, but reducing emissions. The RCP greenhouse gas concentrations and their extensions from 1765 to 2300. Emissions Scenarios Report IPCC, 2000 – Nebojsa Nakicenovic and Rob Swart (Eds.) In the case of the A1 model, there are 4 scenario "groups" based on the possibility … The RCP4.5 and SRES B1 scenarios are comparable; RCP6.0 lies between the SRES B1 and A1B scenarios. The RCP4.5 and RCP6.0 scenarios stabilize after 2100 at 4.2 W / m 2 and 6.0 W / m 2, respectively. To try and capture a range of possible future emissions, energy syste… Key points • Starting point: non-mitigation SRES scenarios (SRES= Special Report on Emission Scenarios, 2000) • Decisions taken by IPCC about development of scenarios for AR5 • Parallel approach with fast-track RCPs • RCPs: Representative Concentration Pathways • NB: Socio-economic aspects covered in Ramon Pichs talk 2 Figure 6.4: RCP Gross Domestic Product Scenarios. For the next IPCC Assessment Report (due in 2021-2022), scientists and modelers are using Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), which link specific policy decisions with projected emissions outcomes. Instructor: Sonya Miller, Researcher, Department of Meteorology, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University. Getting the concentrations actually requires an intermediate step involving the use of simple model of ocean carbon uptake, to account for the effect of oceanic absorption of atmospheric CO 2 . Prepared by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2011) Radiative forcing for the different RCPs. The word representative signifies that each RCP provides only one of many possible scenarios that would lead to the specific radiative forcing characteristics. How do they differ from the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES)? Over the first ten years of these scenarios, observed emissions actually were close to the most carbon intensive of the SRES scenarios—A1FI. Figure 6.3a: RCP Global Population Scenarios, Click here for text description of Figure 6.3a, Figure 6.3b: RCP Global Population Scenarios. Available at:: ... GCM-based regional temperature and precipitation change estimates for Europe under four SRES scenarios applying a super-ensemble patternscaling method. Furthermore, precipitation and streamflow had more obvious increasing tendencies under the RCP scenarios than the SRES scenarios. For more comprehensive information about any of the SRES emissions scenarios, visit the SRES web site at CIESIN. The site editor may also be contacted with questions or comments about this Open Educational Resource. In Part 3 we take a look at the scenarios in detail, consider the technical aspects, the differences between the four RCPs, and how they compare to earlier SRES scenarios… IAM SSP-RCP scenario (e.g., SSP3-4.5) The Scenario Matrix Architecture IAV study Socioeconomic information Climate information. Energy consumption increases in all scenarios, with non-fossil-carbon-based energy sources most important in RCP 2.6; RCP 8.5 relies heavily on coal, Future emissions differ quite dramatically among the scenarios. RCP1.9 is a pathway that limits global warming to below 1.5 °C, the aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement. The approved new set of scenarios is described in the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) ( IPCC 2000 ). Four different narrative storylines were developed to describe consistently the relationships between emission driving forces and their evolution and add context for the scenario quantification. The term pathway emphasises that not only the long-term concentration levels are of interest, but also the trajectory taken over time to reach that outcome (Moss et al., 2010). The RCPs span a wider range of possibilities than the SRES marker scenarios used in the modelling for the IPCC 3rd and Whereas SRES scenarios describe ‘what if’ situations if a given amount of carbon dioxide equivalent was emitted, RCPs relate to concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and are essentially cumulative emissions budgets. One (the A1 'one global family' storyline chosen by Michael Mann and Lee Kump in version 1 of Dire Predictions) assumed a future of globalization and rapid economic and technological growth, including fossil fuel intensive (A1FI), non-fossil fuel intensive (A1T), and balanced (A1B) versions. The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences is committed to making its websites accessible to all users, and welcomes comments or suggestions on access improvements. Figure 6.5: RCP Carbon Dioxide Emission Scenarios. The RCP8.5 scenario is the closest to a ‘business as usual’ scenario of fossil fuel use, and has comparable forcing to SRES A2 by 2100. For example, the second-to-lowest RCP could be considered as a moderate mitigation scenario. From the point of view of controlling future CO 2 concentrations, these graphics can be quite daunting. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and New York, NY, USA. Special Report on Emissions Scenarios, SRES, IPCC, 2000). 109:33-57. To decrease computing time as much as possible, climate models divide the Earth up into large grid cells. IPCC, 2000: IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. (2010), and IPCC (2008)). In the late 2000s, researchers from different modelling groups around the world began the process of developing new scenarios to explore how the world might change over the rest of the 21st century.Earlier efforts during the 1990s had developed the “ The word representative signifies that each RCP provides only one of many possible scenarios that would lead to the specific radiative forcing characteristics. Figure 6.2: Observed Historic Emissions Compares with the Various IPCC SRES Scenarios. Comparable SRES scenario: B2. The readings this week include a Commentary from the journal Nature about the issue of RCPs and the path forward with SSPs. The SRES and RCP scenarios have been criticized for being biased towards “exaggerated resource availability” and making “unrealistic expectations on future production outputs from fossil fuels. 2217 Earth and Engineering Sciences Building, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802 In previous IPCC assessments, the most widely used and referred-to family of emissions scenarios were the so-called SRES scenarios (for Special Report on Emissions Scenarios) that helped form the basis for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. pp 570 Available from Cambridge University Press , The Edinburgh Building Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 2RU ENGLAND Let us now directly compare the various SRES scenarios both in terms of their annual rates of carbon emissions, measured in gigatons (Gt) of carbon (1Gt = 1012 tons), and the resulting trajectories of atmospheric CO 2 concentrations. Cambridge University Press, UK. The scenarios are named after the approximate radiative forcing relative to the pre-industrial period achieved either in the year 2100, or at stabilization after 2100. The climate is affected by many elements, including ocean temperatures, clouds, rainfall and vegetation growth. 2000). In Part 3 we take a look at the scenarios in detail, consider the technical aspects, the differences between the four RCPs, and how they compare to earlier SRES scenarios. For impact, vulnerability or ada… The readings this week include a Commentary from the journal Nature about the issue of RCPs and the path forward with SSPs. RCP 2.6. Another (A2, 'a divided world') assumed a greater emphasis on national identities. Some of these relate to the climate system, such as how sensitivethe climate might be to increased concentrations of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. 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