Investigating geoengineering solutions to meet the 2ºc target
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2014
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CIGEST
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The international community have adopted a global warming limit of 2ºC or below relative pre-industrial
levels as a goal for mitigation efforts to avoid dangerous climate risks. Attempts of deliberate large-scale
intervention of the environment to moderate global warming, the so-called geoengineering, have been
proposed as complementary solution due to the significant probabilities of exceeding the target.
Furthermore, the warming relative to a specified greenhouse gas emissions are not well constraint currently
owing to uncertainties in the climate response and the carbon cycle. This research uses a simple climate
model to quantify the degree of geoengineering intervention that might be required to meet the 2ºC target
under the ‘representative concentration pathways’ (RCP) emission scenarios, and to probabilistically assess
the different combined strategies resulted. The results show that deploying carbon dioxide removal options
to neutralise the cumulative emissions under RCP3-PD (~400 PgC), global surface temperature could be
restored to pre-industrial levels by approximately 2500. Removing 1200, 800, 400, and 0 PgC from the
atmosphere might require a reduction in the solar constant from 0.7% to 0.99% for RCP45, and from
1.55% to 2.23% for RCP6. The different strategies leave from 56.6% to 78.8% of probability (90%
probability interval) to avoid exceeding the 2ºC limit. Substantial amounts of research is needed into
geoengineering, particularly the climate response to those activities that counteract the radiative forcing
imbalance by reducing the solar constant.
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ALTERAÇÕES CLIMÁTICAS, CLIMATE CHANGES, GEOENGENHARIA, GEOENGINEERING