@article{SchleussnerLissnerFischeretal.2016, author = {Schleussner, Carl-Friedrich and Lissner, Tabea K. and Fischer, Erich M. and Wohland, Jan and Perrette, Mahe and Golly, Antonius and Rogelj, Joeri and Childers, Katelin and Schewe, Jacob and Frieler, Katja and Mengel, Matthias and Hare, William and Schaeffer, Michiel}, title = {Differential climate impacts for policy-relevant limits to global warming: the case of 1.5 degrees C and 2 degrees C}, series = {Earth system dynamics}, volume = {7}, journal = {Earth system dynamics}, publisher = {Copernicus}, address = {G{\"o}ttingen}, issn = {2190-4979}, doi = {10.5194/esd-7-327-2016}, pages = {327 -- 351}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Robust appraisals of climate impacts at different levels of global-mean temperature increase are vital to guide assessments of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The 2015 Paris Agreement includes a two-headed temperature goal: "holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C". Despite the prominence of these two temperature limits, a comprehensive overview of the differences in climate impacts at these levels is still missing. Here we provide an assessment of key impacts of climate change at warming levels of 1.5 degrees C and 2 degrees C, including extreme weather events, water availability, agricultural yields, sea-level rise and risk of coral reef loss. Our results reveal substantial differences in impacts between a 1.5 degrees C and 2 degrees C warming that are highly relevant for the assessment of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. For heat-related extremes, the additional 0.5 degrees C increase in global-mean temperature marks the difference between events at the upper limit of present-day natural variability and a new climate regime, particularly in tropical regions. Similarly, this warming difference is likely to be decisive for the future of tropical coral reefs. In a scenario with an end-of-century warming of 2 degrees C, virtually all tropical coral reefs are projected to be at risk of severe degradation due to temperature-induced bleaching from 2050 onwards. This fraction is reduced to about 90\% in 2050 and projected to decline to 70\% by 2100 for a 1.5 degrees C scenario. Analyses of precipitation-related impacts reveal distinct regional differences and hot-spots of change emerge. Regional reduction in median water availability for the Mediterranean is found to nearly double from 9\% to 17\% between 1.5 degrees C and 2 degrees C, and the projected lengthening of regional dry spells increases from 7 to 11\%. Projections for agricultural yields differ between crop types as well as world regions. While some (in particular high-latitude) regions may benefit, tropical regions like West Africa, South-East Asia, as well as Central and northern South America are projected to face substantial local yield reductions, particularly for wheat and maize. Best estimate sea-level rise projections based on two illustrative scenarios indicate a 50cm rise by 2100 relative to year 2000-levels for a 2 degrees C scenario, and about 10 cm lower levels for a 1.5 degrees C scenario. In a 1.5 degrees C scenario, the rate of sea-level rise in 2100 would be reduced by about 30\% compared to a 2 degrees C scenario. Our findings highlight the importance of regional differentiation to assess both future climate risks and different vulnerabilities to incremental increases in global-mean temperature. The article provides a consistent and comprehensive assessment of existing projections and a good basis for future work on refining our understanding of the difference between impacts at 1.5 degrees C and 2 degrees C warming.}, language = {en} } @misc{SchleussnerLissnerFischeretal.2016, author = {Schleussner, Carl-Friedrich and Lissner, Tabea Katharina and Fischer, Erich M. and Wohland, Jan and Perrette, Mah{\´e} and Golly, Antonius and Rogelj, Joeri and Childers, Katelin and Schewe, Jacob and Frieler, Katja and Mengel, Matthias and Hare, William and Schaeffer, Michiel}, title = {Differential climate impacts for policy-relevant limits to global warming}, series = {Earth System Dynamics}, journal = {Earth System Dynamics}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-410258}, pages = {25}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Robust appraisals of climate impacts at different levels of global-mean temperature increase are vital to guide assessments of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The 2015 Paris Agreement includes a two-headed temperature goal: "holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C". Despite the prominence of these two temperature limits, a comprehensive overview of the differences in climate impacts at these levels is still missing. Here we provide an assessment of key impacts of climate change at warming levels of 1.5 degrees C and 2 degrees C, including extreme weather events, water availability, agricultural yields, sea-level rise and risk of coral reef loss. Our results reveal substantial differences in impacts between a 1.5 degrees C and 2 degrees C warming that are highly relevant for the assessment of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. For heat-related extremes, the additional 0.5 degrees C increase in global-mean temperature marks the difference between events at the upper limit of present-day natural variability and a new climate regime, particularly in tropical regions. Similarly, this warming difference is likely to be decisive for the future of tropical coral reefs. In a scenario with an end-of-century warming of 2 degrees C, virtually all tropical coral reefs are projected to be at risk of severe degradation due to temperature-induced bleaching from 2050 onwards. This fraction is reduced to about 90\% in 2050 and projected to decline to 70\% by 2100 for a 1.5 degrees C scenario. Analyses of precipitation-related impacts reveal distinct regional differences and hot-spots of change emerge. Regional reduction in median water availability for the Mediterranean is found to nearly double from 9\% to 17\% between 1.5 degrees C and 2 degrees C, and the projected lengthening of regional dry spells increases from 7 to 11\%. Projections for agricultural yields differ between crop types as well as world regions. While some (in particular high-latitude) regions may benefit, tropical regions like West Africa, South-East Asia, as well as Central and northern South America are projected to face substantial local yield reductions, particularly for wheat and maize. Best estimate sea-level rise projections based on two illustrative scenarios indicate a 50cm rise by 2100 relative to year 2000-levels for a 2 degrees C scenario, and about 10 cm lower levels for a 1.5 degrees C scenario. In a 1.5 degrees C scenario, the rate of sea-level rise in 2100 would be reduced by about 30\% compared to a 2 degrees C scenario. Our findings highlight the importance of regional differentiation to assess both future climate risks and different vulnerabilities to incremental increases in global-mean temperature. The article provides a consistent and comprehensive assessment of existing projections and a good basis for future work on refining our understanding of the difference between impacts at 1.5 degrees C and 2 degrees C warming.}, language = {en} } @article{MesterWillnerFrieleretal.2021, author = {Mester, Benedikt and Willner, Sven N. and Frieler, Katja and Schewe, Jacob}, title = {Evaluation of river flood extent simulated with multiple global hydrological models and climate forcings}, series = {Environmental research letters : ERL / Institute of Physics}, volume = {16}, journal = {Environmental research letters : ERL / Institute of Physics}, number = {9}, publisher = {IOP Publ. Ltd.}, address = {Bristol}, issn = {1748-9326}, doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/ac188d}, pages = {15}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Global flood models (GFMs) are increasingly being used to estimate global-scale societal and economic risks of river flooding. Recent validation studies have highlighted substantial differences in performance between GFMs and between validation sites. However, it has not been systematically quantified to what extent the choice of the underlying climate forcing and global hydrological model (GHM) influence flood model performance. Here, we investigate this sensitivity by comparing simulated flood extent to satellite imagery of past flood events, for an ensemble of three climate reanalyses and 11 GHMs. We study eight historical flood events spread over four continents and various climate zones. For most regions, the simulated inundation extent is relatively insensitive to the choice of GHM. For some events, however, individual GHMs lead to much lower agreement with observations than the others, mostly resulting from an overestimation of inundated areas. Two of the climate forcings show very similar results, while with the third, differences between GHMs become more pronounced. We further show that when flood protection standards are accounted for, many models underestimate flood extent, pointing to deficiencies in their flood frequency distribution. Our study guides future applications of these models, and highlights regions and models where targeted improvements might yield the largest performance gains.}, language = {en} } @article{FrielerSchaubergerArnethetal.2017, author = {Frieler, Katja and Schauberger, Bernhard and Arneth, Almut and Balkovic, Juraj and Chryssanthacopoulos, James and Deryng, Delphine and Elliott, Joshua and Folberth, Christian and Khabarov, Nikolay and M{\"u}ller, Christoph and Olin, Stefan and Pugh, Thomas A. M. and Schaphoff, Sibyll and Schewe, Jacob and Schmid, Erwin and Warszawski, Lila and Levermann, Anders}, title = {Understanding the weather signal in national crop-yield variability}, series = {Earths future}, volume = {5}, journal = {Earths future}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hoboken}, issn = {2328-4277}, doi = {10.1002/2016EF000525}, pages = {605 -- 616}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Year-to-year variations in crop yields can have major impacts on the livelihoods of subsistence farmers and may trigger significant global price fluctuations, with severe consequences for people in developing countries. Fluctuations can be induced by weather conditions, management decisions, weeds, diseases, and pests. Although an explicit quantification and deeper understanding of weather-induced crop-yield variability is essential for adaptation strategies, so far it has only been addressed by empirical models. Here, we provide conservative estimates of the fraction of reported national yield variabilities that can be attributed to weather by state-of-the-art, process-based crop model simulations. We find that observed weather variations can explain more than 50\% of the variability in wheat yields in Australia, Canada, Spain, Hungary, and Romania. For maize, weather sensitivities exceed 50\% in seven countries, including the United States. The explained variance exceeds 50\% for rice in Japan and South Korea and for soy in Argentina. Avoiding water stress by simulating yields assuming full irrigation shows that water limitation is a major driver of the observed variations in most of these countries. Identifying the mechanisms leading to crop-yield fluctuations is not only fundamental for dampening fluctuations, but is also important in the context of the debate on the attribution of loss and damage to climate change. Since process-based crop models not only account for weather influences on crop yields, but also provide options to represent human-management measures, they could become essential tools for differentiating these drivers, and for exploring options to reduce future yield fluctuations.}, language = {en} } @article{MenonLevermannScheweetal.2013, author = {Menon, Arathy and Levermann, Anders and Schewe, Jacob and Lehmann, J. and Frieler, Katja}, title = {Consistent increase in Indian monsoon rainfall and its variability across CMIP-5 models}, series = {Earth system dynamics}, volume = {4}, journal = {Earth system dynamics}, number = {2}, publisher = {Copernicus}, address = {G{\"o}ttingen}, issn = {2190-4979}, doi = {10.5194/esd-4-287-2013}, pages = {287 -- 300}, year = {2013}, abstract = {The possibility of an impact of global warming on the Indian monsoon is of critical importance for the large population of this region. Future projections within the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 3 (CMIP-3) showed a wide range of trends with varying magnitude and sign across models. Here the Indian summer monsoon rainfall is evaluated in 20 CMIP-5 models for the period 1850 to 2100. In the new generation of climate models, a consistent increase in seasonal mean rainfall during the summer monsoon periods arises. All models simulate stronger seasonal mean rainfall in the future compared to the historic period under the strongest warming scenario RCP-8.5. Increase in seasonal mean rainfall is the largest for the RCP-8.5 scenario compared to other RCPs. Most of the models show a northward shift in monsoon circulation by the end of the 21st century compared to the historic period under the RCP-8.5 scenario. The interannual variability of the Indian monsoon rainfall also shows a consistent positive trend under unabated global warming. Since both the long-term increase in monsoon rainfall as well as the increase in interannual variability in the future is robust across a wide range of models, some confidence can be attributed to these projected trends.}, language = {en} } @misc{FrielerLevermannElliottetal.2015, author = {Frieler, Katja and Levermann, Anders and Elliott, J. and Heinke, J. and Arneth, A. and Bierkens, M. F. P. and Ciais, Philippe and Clark, D. B. and Deryng, D. and Doell, P. and Falloon, P. and Fekete, B. and Folberth, Christian and Friend, A. D. and Gellhorn, C. and Gosling, S. N. and Haddeland, I. and Khabarov, N. and Lomas, M. and Masaki, Y. and Nishina, K. and Neumann, K. and Oki, T. and Pavlick, R. and Ruane, A. C. and Schmid, E. and Schmitz, C. and Stacke, T. and Stehfest, E. and Tang, Q. and Wisser, D. and Huber, V. and Piontek, Franziska and Warszawski, L. and Schewe, Jacob and Lotze-Campen, Hermann and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim}, title = {A framework for the cross-sectoral integration of multi-model impact projections}, series = {Earth system dynamics}, journal = {Earth system dynamics}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-407968}, pages = {14}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Climate change and its impacts already pose considerable challenges for societies that will further increase with global warming (IPCC, 2014a, b). Uncertainties of the climatic response to greenhouse gas emissions include the potential passing of large-scale tipping points (e.g. Lenton et al., 2008; Levermann et al., 2012; Schellnhuber, 2010) and changes in extreme meteorological events (Field et al., 2012) with complex impacts on societies (Hallegatte et al., 2013). Thus climate change mitigation is considered a necessary societal response for avoiding uncontrollable impacts (Conference of the Parties, 2010). On the other hand, large-scale climate change mitigation itself implies fundamental changes in, for example, the global energy system. The associated challenges come on top of others that derive from equally important ethical imperatives like the fulfilment of increasing food demand that may draw on the same resources. For example, ensuring food security for a growing population may require an expansion of cropland, thereby reducing natural carbon sinks or the area available for bio-energy production. So far, available studies addressing this problem have relied on individual impact models, ignoring uncertainty in crop model and biome model projections. Here, we propose a probabilistic decision framework that allows for an evaluation of agricultural management and mitigation options in a multi-impact-model setting. Based on simulations generated within the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), we outline how cross-sectorally consistent multi-model impact simulations could be used to generate the information required for robust decision making. Using an illustrative future land use pattern, we discuss the trade-off between potential gains in crop production and associated losses in natural carbon sinks in the new multiple crop-and biome-model setting. In addition, crop and water model simulations are combined to explore irrigation increases as one possible measure of agricultural intensification that could limit the expansion of cropland required in response to climate change and growing food demand. This example shows that current impact model uncertainties pose an important challenge to long-term mitigation planning and must not be ignored in long-term strategic decision making.}, language = {en} } @article{FrielerLevermannElliottetal.2015, author = {Frieler, Katja and Levermann, Anders and Elliott, J. and Heinke, Jens and Arneth, A. and Bierkens, M. F. P. and Ciais, Philippe and Clark, D. B. and Deryng, D. and Doell, P. and Falloon, P. and Fekete, B. and Folberth, Christian and Friend, A. D. and Gellhorn, C. and Gosling, S. N. and Haddeland, I. and Khabarov, N. and Lomas, M. and Masaki, Y. and Nishina, K. and Neumann, K. and Oki, T. and Pavlick, R. and Ruane, A. C. and Schmid, E. and Schmitz, C. and Stacke, T. and Stehfest, E. and Tang, Q. and Wisser, D. and Huber, Veronika and Piontek, Franziska and Warszawski, Lila and Schewe, Jacob and Lotze-Campen, Hermann and Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim}, title = {A framework for the cross-sectoral integration of multi-model impact projections}, series = {Earth system dynamics}, volume = {6}, journal = {Earth system dynamics}, number = {2}, publisher = {Copernicus}, address = {G{\"o}ttingen}, issn = {2190-4979}, doi = {10.5194/esd-6-447-2015}, pages = {447 -- 460}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Climate change and its impacts already pose considerable challenges for societies that will further increase with global warming (IPCC, 2014a, b). Uncertainties of the climatic response to greenhouse gas emissions include the potential passing of large-scale tipping points (e.g. Lenton et al., 2008; Levermann et al., 2012; Schellnhuber, 2010) and changes in extreme meteorological events (Field et al., 2012) with complex impacts on societies (Hallegatte et al., 2013). Thus climate change mitigation is considered a necessary societal response for avoiding uncontrollable impacts (Conference of the Parties, 2010). On the other hand, large-scale climate change mitigation itself implies fundamental changes in, for example, the global energy system. The associated challenges come on top of others that derive from equally important ethical imperatives like the fulfilment of increasing food demand that may draw on the same resources. For example, ensuring food security for a growing population may require an expansion of cropland, thereby reducing natural carbon sinks or the area available for bio-energy production. So far, available studies addressing this problem have relied on individual impact models, ignoring uncertainty in crop model and biome model projections. Here, we propose a probabilistic decision framework that allows for an evaluation of agricultural management and mitigation options in a multi-impact-model setting. Based on simulations generated within the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), we outline how cross-sectorally consistent multi-model impact simulations could be used to generate the information required for robust decision making. Using an illustrative future land use pattern, we discuss the trade-off between potential gains in crop production and associated losses in natural carbon sinks in the new multiple crop-and biome-model setting. In addition, crop and water model simulations are combined to explore irrigation increases as one possible measure of agricultural intensification that could limit the expansion of cropland required in response to climate change and growing food demand. This example shows that current impact model uncertainties pose an important challenge to long-term mitigation planning and must not be ignored in long-term strategic decision making.}, language = {en} }