Emissions and emergence: A new index comparing relative contributions to climate change with relative climatic consequences

Frame, Dave, Harrington, Luke, Fuglestvedt, Jan, Millar, Richard, Joshi, Manoj ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2948-2811 and Caney, Simon (2019) Emissions and emergence: A new index comparing relative contributions to climate change with relative climatic consequences. Environmental Research Letters, 14 (8). ISSN 1748-9326

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Abstract

We develop a new index which maps relative climate change contributions to relative emergent impacts of climate change. The index compares cumulative emissions data with patterns of signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) in regional temperature (Frame et al., 2017). The latter act as a proxy for a range of local climate impacts, so emergent patterns of this ratio provide an informative way of summarising the regional disparities of climate change impacts. Here we combine these with measures of regional/national contributions to climate change to develop an “emissions-emergence index” (EEI) linking regions’/countries’ contributions to climate change with the emergent regional impacts of climate change. The EEI is a simple but robust indicator which captures relative contributions to and regional impacts from climate change. We demonstrate the applicability of the EEI both for discussions of historical contributions and impacts, and for considering future relative contributions and impacts, and examine its utility in the context of existing related metrics. Finally, we show how future emissions pathways can either imply a growth or reduction of regional climate change inequalities depending on the type and compositions of socioeconomic development strategies

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:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	11 Jun 2019 10:35
Last Modified:	20 Oct 2023 01:12
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/71310
DOI:	10.1088/1748-9326/ab27fc

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