Via press release from the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science
New carbon dioxide emissions model
Meteorologists have determined exactly how much carbon dioxide humans can emit into the atmosphere while ensuring that the earth does not heat up by more than two degrees
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculated projected temperature changes for various scenarios in 2007 and researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg have now gone one step further: they have developed a new model that specifies the maximum volumes of carbon dioxide that humans may emit to remain below the critical threshold for climate warming of two degrees Celsius. To do this, the scientists incorporated into their calculations data relating to the carbon cycle, namely the volume of carbon dioxide absorbed and released by the oceans and forests. The aim of the international ENSEMBLES project is to simulate future changes in the global climate and carbon dioxide emissions and thereby to obtain more reliable threshold values on this basis. (Climatic Change, July 21, 2010)
Fig.: Evolution of the carbon dioxide emissions calculated by the model (left) and the temporal development of the global mean annual temperature (right). In order to achieve the long-term stabilisation of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, fossil carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to around zero by the end of the century. The black lines represent the observed values. (GtC/year = gigatons carbon/year)
Image: Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused by the combustion of fossil fuels (gas, oil) has increased by around 35 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. If carbon dioxide emissions and, as a result, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations continue to increase unchecked, a drastic increase in the global temperature can be expected before the end of this century. With the help of new models for a prescribed atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, scientists from all over Europe have now calculated for the first time the extent to which the global carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced to halt global warming.
“What’s new about this research is that we have integrated the carbon cycle into our model to obtain the emissions data,” says Erich Roeckner. According to the model, admissible carbon dioxide emissions will increase from approximately seven billion tonnes of carbon in the year 2000 to a maximum value of around ten billion tonnes in 2015. In order to achieve the long-term stabilisation of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, the emissions will then have to be reduced by 56 percent by the year 2050 and approach zero towards the end of this century. Although, based on these calculations, global warming would remain under the two-degree threshold until 2100, further warming may be expected in the long term: “It will take centuries for the global climate system to stabilise,” says Erich Roeckner.
The scientists used a new method with which they reconstructed historical emission pathways on the basis of already-calculated carbon dioxide concentrations. To do this, Erich Roeckner and his team adopted the methodology proposed by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for simulations being carried out for the future Fifth IPCC Assessment Report: earth system models that incorporate the carbon cycle were used to estimate the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions that are compatible with a prescribed concentration pathway. In this case, the emissions depend solely on the proportion of the anthropogenic carbon in the model that is absorbed by the land surface and the oceans. Repetition of the experiments using different pre-industrial starting dates enabled the scientists to distinguish between anthropogenic climate change and internal climate variability.
The model used for this study is based on a low-resolution spatial grid with a grid spacing of around 400 kilometres, which takes the atmosphere, plus the land surface, the ocean, including sea ice, and the marine and terrestrial carbon cycle into account.
The overall aim of the study is to simulate future changes in the climate and carbon dioxide emissions in a single scenario in which the carbon dioxide equivalent concentrations in the atmosphere are stabilised in the long term at 450 parts per million (ppm), so that global warming increases to a maximum of two degrees above the pre-industrial level. The data are currently being evaluated by other European climate centres. “As soon as all of the results are available, we can evaluate the spread between the models,” says Erich Roeckner. “The more significant the data we have, the more accurate our forecast will be.”
Related links:
[1] Website of the ENSEMBLES project
Original work:
Erich Roeckner, Marco A. Giorgetta, Traute Crueger, Monika Esch, Julia Pongratz
Historical and future anthropogenic emission pathways
Zero emissions within 90 years? Not going to happen, under any scenario. So it won’t drive effective action, but instead absurd demands and polarized politics.
Funny how they don’t even mention the main drivers of our climate, the sun and oceanic cycles. The cooling over the next decades should temper this though.
This is some real red meat for the warmists, expect to see this popping up everywhere.
Rather than halting my respiration, I’ll let the grass grow a bit taller in the yard.
BTW:
Do they realize that to achieve zero human CO2 emissions we’ve all gotta DIE?!!
It is interesting that they make no mention of what kind of economy could exist under 0% man made fossil fuel emissions, or even at 1970 emission levels with current or future GDPs. Their conclusion would require a catastrophic contraction of the current economy.
If what they are proposing is our only salvation, we might as well abandon the CO2 reduction project completely as China and India are makeing any such attempts futile. . . . . . not to mention the largest emitters. . . . the biomass and oceans.
From a practical public policy perspective, you have to wonder what beneficial value such a conclusion could offer. . . other than hopelessness?
Its time for the world to follow the US and pull all funding from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The one thing all this has proven, countries should fund their own research, do their own Peer Review, and then meet at a round table to share results.
Zero CO2 emissions is ignorant.
What does the German science community think of this Institute for Meteorology computer game?
Amazing what models can do!
What do they assume is the residence time of carbon in the atmosphere and what is their proof? I recall that AR4 assumes 100 years which far exceeds the robust consensus in the peer reviewed literature per 24 studies cited at c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5f07875970c-pi
It sounds like same old, same old to me.
400km resolution? Still not worth a goddamn cent. Until it’s fractal and has a resolution of less than 1km it ain’t worth shissen.
““What’s new about this research is that we have integrated the carbon cycle into our model to obtain the emissions data,” says Erich Roeckner.” –
… Wait a minute. The other models DON’T integrate the carbon cycle into their calculations?
This is GREAT!
Somebody please get a 500MW dynamo to the Max Plank institute right away!!
Max has got to be doing 1800 RPM in his grave.
Damn, and I was just getting used to breathing.
To all of those against this finding, it seems that you are not properly sedated. If you feel that you are not properly sedated, please ring 333. Failure to do so will put you in breach of the drug evasion act.
C’mon, Max Planck Institute. Show us the way. Shut down all your activities immediately. Lead by example, not empty words.
perversly (sp?) this ia a “good news story” – even the most un-informed , or even interested neutral, will start to see these ever shriller cliams for the nonsense they are.
Ed Murphy says: “These people think we’re completely retarded mongoloids?”
No, they think you don’t own any newspapers, that your elected representatives are card-carrying, Kool-Aid guzzling socialists, and that the latter will tax you to death to keep their grant gravy-train rolling long enough for the UN to set up a non-democratic government.
zero emissions in 90 years? i guess the mathematical probability of that isn’t zero…
it’d be funny if they weren’t serious.
Hmm, so how come my posts are still saying “awaiting moderation” when I see posts after mine? WUWT? Am I being boycotted?
There will be less then 500 million people by 2100 if things go as planned for the commies. Maybe this zero CO2 emissions is an inside humor among them?
Can someone help me understand this?
They say that if we stop human CO2 emissions by the end of the century temperature will continue to rise for 100’s more years. OK, I suppose that means that somehow CO2 doesn’t have its entire heating effect straight away, but only over a long period.
But we’re told that the warming between the mid 1970’s and the late 1990’s was caused by human produced CO2. So, given that human production of CO2 was negligible until at least the mid 20th century, that means that some warming kicks in pretty quickly.
So how much heat retention would the existing CO2, assuming no further CO2 production, cause over the next say 90 years? The 70’s-90’s warming was about 0.5 of a degree. How much more should follow on their model from what we’ve got already? Whatever figure it is, how does that match temperatures in past times when for many thousands of years there were CO2 levels many times higher than what we’ve got now?
I think I must be misunderstanding the whole thing, because I can’t see how what they are now saying can possibly conform with known reality – at least not if there’s any truth to the idea that the 70’s-90’s warming was largely human produced.
Doug in Seattle says:
August 3, 2010 at 6:05 pm
I think that Max and his buddies need to spend more time studying CO2 rather than models.
Reply: I think Max is rotating at high rpm’s in his grave!
Well, at least this time it was European Climate Ca$h that paid for this work…
If people only knew what the government was doing with their tax money!
A stable climate sounds a bit creepy – no change, just the same old what ever was popular at the time. It really is worse than we thought.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/faq/index.cfm?faq=03
At least 20 volcanoes will probably be erupting as you read these words (Italy’s Stromboli, for example, has been erupting for more than a thousand years);
…and some estimates of young seafloor volcanoes exceed a million.
Severian says: “Max Planck must be rolling in his grave.”
Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. This December, the Max Crank Institute for Meteorological Humbug will be visited by three spirits: Planck, Einstein, and Feynman….