Spatially resolved emulated annual temperature projections for overshoot pathways

Area of Science:

• Climate Science
• Earth System Science
• Environmental Modeling

Background:

• Insufficient climate action makes exceeding 1.5°C global warming likely this century.
• Temporary temperature overshoot presents poorly understood additional climate risks.
• Limited Earth System Model projections hinder analysis of overshoot pathway impacts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create a novel dataset of spatially resolved emulated annual temperature projections for diverse overshoot pathways.
• To enable comprehensive analysis of local and regional climate change impacts under temperature overshoot scenarios.
• To address the scarcity of Earth System Model data for temporary global warming exceedance.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the FaIR and MESMER emulators to generate temperature projections.
• Translated ten emission scenarios (seven with overshoot) into global mean temperatures using FaIR.
• Converted global mean temperatures into stochastic local annual temperature fields using MESMER, optimizing for ensemble spread and storage.

Main Results:

• Developed a dataset of spatially resolved emulated annual temperature projections for multiple overshoot pathways.
• Provided a method to generate large ensembles of local temperature fields from global mean temperatures.
• Assessed the sensitivity of sample quantiles to ensemble size for efficient data generation.

Conclusions:

• The novel dataset facilitates the study of local and regional climate change impacts from temperature overshoot.
• Enables investigation into the timing and magnitude of exceeding critical temperature thresholds.
• Supports a more thorough understanding of climate risks associated with temporary global warming exceedance.