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Updated: Dec 13, 2025

Measuring Carbon-based Contaminant Mineralization Using Combined CO2 Flux and Radiocarbon Analyses
Published on: October 21, 2016
RCP8.5 tracks cumulative CO2 emissions
Christopher R Schwalm1, Spencer Glendon2, Philip B Duffy2
1Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA 02540 cschwalm@whrc.org.
Abstract:
Climate simulation-based scenarios are routinely used to characterize a range of plausible climate futures. Despite some recent progress on bending the emissions curve, RCP8.5, the most aggressive scenario in assumed fossil fuel use for global climate models, will continue to serve as a useful tool for quantifying physical climate risk, especially over near- to midterm policy-relevant time horizons. Not only are the emissions consistent with RCP8.5 in close agreement with historical total cumulative CO2 emissions (within 1%), but RCP8.5 is also the best match out to midcentury under current and stated policies with still highly plausible levels of CO2 emissions in 2100.
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