Earth System responses to highly ambitious mitigation scenarios : Contributions from forcing and model uncertainties

Human activities have caused strong alterations to the climate system. International political efforts have attempted to avoid further impacts by limiting global warming levels. In this sense, highly ambitious emissions mitigation scenarios are a desirable future to be aimed for. Despite a clear necessity of reaching such scenarios, uncertainty remains on potential system responses as the importance of carbon forcing decreases. This thesis shows that varying aerosols spatial implementation allows for a considerable surface temperature variability, as well as variability in individual components’, such as land carbon uptake, contributions to the warming or cooling of the system. Triggered feedbacks due to aerosols implementations can have a crucial impact in assessing ambitious mitigation scenarios. Furthermore, the thesis introduces a new framework (FROT: Framework for Radiative cOntributions to Temperature responses), to comprehensively assess the temperature variability for different ambitious mitigation future scenarios, and to account for individual contributions from different climate components. The findings corroborate the need for including forcings and transient responses when assessing climate development. Finally, the thesis focused on techniques to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It finds that for centennial timescales dissolved ocean oxygen under cabon dioxide removal is unable to return to pre-industrial levels. This response is dependent on the region and depth considered. The findings indicate that apparent oxygen use dominates the simulated oxygen development, especially due to changes in circulation and ventilation. These findings widen the understanding of expected responses and components development under ambitious mitigation scenarios, either by reducing or by clarifying different uncertainties expected in the assessment, analysis and potential real-world outcomes of these scenarios.

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