Publications

Aggregations of greenhouse gas mitigation pledges by countries are frequently used to indicate whether resulting global emissions in 2020 will be 'on track' to limit global temperature increase to below specific warming levels such as 1.5 or 2 °C. We find that historical emission levels aggregated from data that are officially reported by countries to the UNFCCC are lower than independent global emission estimates, such as the IPCC SRES scenarios.

Here the main characteristics of the new version 1.2 of the three-dimensional Earth system model of intermediate complexity LOVECLIM are briefly described.

By simply summing up their communicated numbers, developed country Parties so far meet their collective commitment of USD 30 billion for the period 2010-2012. This result however is distorted as countries discretionally decide which funding is eligible to be counted as fast-start finance (FSF). Clarification on the notion of additionality will be needed to assess what is really delivered as fast-start finance.

This analysis demonstrates that the Copenhagen Accord and the pledges made under it represent a set of dissonant ambitions. Due to the limited level of ambition by 2020, the ability to limit emissions afterwards to pathways consistent with either the 2 or 1.5 °C goal is likely to become less feasible.

In the IPCC's 4th Assessment Report the global warming potentials were updated from those in the 1995 2nd Assessment Report. Here we explore using the updated GWPs to estimate the effects of the 2020 emissions targets on global warming.