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Climate policy implications of nonlinear decline of Arctic land permafrost and other cryosphere elements

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Yumashev, Dmitry 
Hope, Chris 
Schaefer, Kevin 
Riemann-Campe, Kathrin 
Iglesias-Suarez, Fernando 

Abstract

Arctic feedbacks accelerate climate change through carbon releases from thawing permafrost and higher solar absorption from reductions in the surface albedo, following loss of sea ice and land snow. Here, we include dynamic emulators of complex physical models in the integrated assessment model PAGE-ICE to explore nonlinear transitions in the Arctic feedbacks and their subsequent impacts on the global climate and economy under the Paris Agreement scenarios. The permafrost feedback is increasingly positive in warmer climates, while the albedo feedback weakens as the ice and snow melt. Combined, these two factors lead to significant increases in the mean discounted economic effect of climate change: +4.0% ($24.8 trillion) under the 1.5 °C scenario, +5.5% ($33.8 trillion) under the 2 °C scenario, and +4.8% ($66.9 trillion) under mitigation levels consistent with the current national pledges. Considering the nonlinear Arctic feedbacks makes the 1.5 °C target marginally more economically attractive than the 2 °C target, although both are statistically equivalent.

Description

Keywords

37 Earth Sciences, 3709 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience, 13 Climate Action

Journal Title

Nature Communications

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723
2041-1723

Volume Title

10

Publisher

Springer Nature
Sponsorship
European Commission (603887)
This work is part of the ICE-ARC project funded by the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme, (grant 603887, contribution 006). D.Y. received additional funding from ERIM, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Paul Ekins at the ISR, University College London. K.S. was funded by NSF (grant 1503559) and NASA (grants NNX14A154G, NNX17AC59A). E.J. was funded by the NGEE Arctic project supported by the BER Office of Science at the U.S. DOE. Y.E. was funded by the NSF (grant 1900795). E.B. was supported by the UK Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme funded by BEIS and DEFRA.