Graphs - September 2009
This page shows various climate results if the proposals in the public domain in September 2009 were fully implemented. Details of our simulation's assumptions and methods are in the preceding white paper.
For the same graphs measured in "equivalent" CO2, click here.
We collected emissions reductions proposals in the public domain up until September, 2009 (called "Current Proposals" in the graph and documented here) – and found that even if these were fully implemented they would be far from sufficient to meet the goal of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 levels at or below 350 ppm, reaching instead about 716 ppm CO2 and 944 CO2e by 2100.
These proposals would not be sufficient to limit warming to 2°C over pre-industrial temperatures, creating instead approximately 3.5°C of temperature increase by 2100.
"Current proposals" reduce the gap between “Business As Usual” (BAU) and the trajectory required to limit global average temperature to 2°C by less than 50%.
If the UNFCCC process is to achieve widely accepted climate goals – such as stabilizing CO2 levels between 350-450 ppm and limiting temperature increase to less than 2°C over pre-industrial – then, in the next months, emissions reduction proposals must become significantly more ambitious.
We used C-ROADS to create a third line as well -- the "2 degree path".
Note that all these scenarios show the mid-point of a range of possible futures, given uncertainties in the system such as the rate at which plants, soils, and oceans uptake carbon dioxide, and the sensitivity of the climate to increases in greenhouse gases.
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