Responsibility of major emitters for country-level warming and extreme hot years
Abstract
The contributions of single greenhouse gas emitters to country-level climate change are generally not disentangled, despite their relevance for climate policy and litigation. Here, we quantify the contributions of the five largest emitters (China, US, EU-27, India, and Russia) to projected 2030 country-level warming and extreme hot years with respect to pre-industrial climate using an innovative suite of Earth System Model emulators. We find that under current pledges, their cumulated 1991-2030 emissions are expected to result in extreme hot years every second year by 2030 in twice as many countries (92%) as without their influence (46%). If all world nations shared the same fossil CO2 per capita emissions as projected for the US from 2016-2030, global warming in 2030 would be 0.4 °C higher than under actual current pledges, and 75% of all countries would exceed 2 °C of regional warming instead of 11%. Our results highlight the responsibility of individual emitters in driving regional climate change and provide additional angles for the climate policy discourse. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000525058Publication status
publishedExternal links
Journal / series
Communications Earth & EnvironmentVolume
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
SpringerSubject
Attribution; Climate and Earth system modelling; Climate-change impacts; Climate-change mitigation; Projection and predictionOrganisational unit
03778 - Seneviratne, Sonia / Seneviratne, Sonia
Funding
820829 - LC-CLA-08-2018 | RIA | Constraining uncertainty of multi decadal climate projections (EC)
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