Climate and Earth system responses to climate neutrality and net negative emissions

RESCUE (Response of the Earth System to overshoot, Climate neutrality and negative Emissions) aims to improve our knowledge and understanding of the climate and Earth system responses to climate neutrality and net negative emissions. RESCUE focusses on 1) the quantification of the climate and Earth system responses to pathways achieving climate neutrality by Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) deployment with and without temperature overshoot, and 2) assesses the potential role of CDR in reducing net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, as well as its potential environmental risks and co-benefits.

Purpose of the project

RESCUE aims to expand existing knowledge on various Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) methods to design a suite of new global temperature stabilisation scenarios at several target values to improve our understanding of the climate and Earth system responses to climate neutrality and net negative emissions. New model developments will deliver improved climate projections with explicit representation of CDR portfolios for these scenarios.

The analyses will be devoted to finding suitable pathways to climate neutrality considering multiple aspects of the Earth system response: mean climate and extremes, sea-level rise, global carbon cycling, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Particular attention will be paid to the reversibility of induced changes by comparing scenarios with and without temperature overshoot.

To assess the potential role of CDR in reducing net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, RESCUE will analyse various factors determining overall effectiveness, impacts and co-benefits of CDR portfolios. These factors include CDR-specific CO2 uptake, CDR-induced biogeophysical climate feedbacks, CDR-derived non-CO2 radiative forcers, and the interaction between socio-economic and environmental impacts (e.g., biodiversity). Moreover, a dedicated analysis will provide key criteria for developing a monitoring system for the effectiveness of CDR portfolio deployments and their potential side effects.

Stakeholders will be closely engaged throughout the project to ensure policy relevance of the results which will be communicated widely and made freely available via existing climate services, such as the PROVIDE project’s climate risk dashboard.

Role of Climate Analytics

Climate Analytics has two main roles in the RESCUE consortium: (1) Co-leading the activities related to dissemination and exploitation of results, as well as stakeholder engagement to establish a science-policy dialogue on the research, and ensuring that the results are translated into useful information for climate policy. (2) Contributing to scoping of CDR portfolios that can be used in Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs); leading the activities on harmonisation and gridding of land-use and emission data for IAM scenarios; and developing a new set of CDR portfolio climate neutrality scenarios until 2100 that can be used in the Earth System Models (ESMs).