Population-based emergence of unfamiliar climates

Frame, Dave, Joshi, Manoj ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2948-2811, Hawkins, Ed, Harrington, Luke J. and de Roiste, Mairead (2017) Population-based emergence of unfamiliar climates. Nature Climate Change, 7. 407–411. ISSN 1758-678X

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Abstract

Time of Emergence’ (ToE), which characterizes when significant signals of climate change will emerge from existing variability, is a useful and increasingly common metric. However, a more useful metric for understanding future climate change in the context of past experience may be the ratio of climate signal to noise (S/N) – a measure of the amplitude of change expressed in terms of units of existing variability. Here, we present S/N projections in the context of emergent climates (termed ‘unusual’, ‘unfamiliar’ and ‘unknown’ by reference to an individual’s lifetime), highlighting sensitivity to future emissions scenarios and geographical and human groupings. We show how for large sections of the world’s population, and for several geopolitical international groupings, mitigation can delay the onset of ’unknown‘ or ’unfamiliar’ climates by decades, and perhaps even beyond 2100. Our results demonstrate that the benefits of mitigation accumulate over several decades, a key metric for such benefits is reducing S/N, or keeping climate as familiar as possible, and that a relationship exists between cumulative emissions and patterns of emergent climate signals. Timely mitigation will therefore provide the greatest benefits to those facing the earliest impacts, many of whom are alive now.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups:	University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Climatic Research Unit Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	20 Apr 2017 05:05
Last Modified:	20 Oct 2023 01:05
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/63260
DOI:	10.1038/nclimate3297

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