IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/climat/v124y2014i3p459-476.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Uncertainty in an emissions-constrained world

Author

Listed:
  • Matthias Jonas
  • Gregg Marland
  • Volker Krey
  • Fabian Wagner
  • Zbigniew Nahorski

Abstract

Our study focuses on uncertainty in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from anthropogenic sources, including land use and land-use change activities. We aim to understand the relevance of diagnostic (retrospective) and prognostic (prospective) uncertainty in an emissions-temperature setting that seeks to constrain global warming and to link uncertainty consistently across temporal scales. We discuss diagnostic and prognostic uncertainty in a systems setting that allows any country to understand its national and near-term mitigation and adaptation efforts in a globally consistent and long-term context. Cumulative emissions are not only constrained and globally binding but exhibit quantitative uncertainty; and whether or not compliance with an agreed temperature target will be achieved is also uncertain. To facilitate discussions, we focus on two countries, the USA and China. While our study addresses whether or not future increase in global temperature can be kept below 2, 3, or 4 °C targets, its primary aim is to use those targets to demonstrate the relevance of both diagnostic and prognostic uncertainty. We show how to combine diagnostic and prognostic uncertainty to take more educated (precautionary) decisions for reducing emissions toward an agreed temperature target; and how to perceive combined diagnostic and prognostic uncertainty-related risk. Diagnostic uncertainty is the uncertainty contained in inventoried emission estimates and relates to the risk that true GHG emissions are greater than inventoried emission estimates reported in a specified year; prognostic uncertainty refers to cumulative emissions between a start year and a future target year, and relates to the risk that an agreed temperature target is exceeded. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Matthias Jonas & Gregg Marland & Volker Krey & Fabian Wagner & Zbigniew Nahorski, 2014. "Uncertainty in an emissions-constrained world," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 124(3), pages 459-476, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:124:y:2014:i:3:p:459-476
    DOI: 10.1007/s10584-014-1103-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10584-014-1103-6
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10584-014-1103-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David G. Victor, 2009. "Global warming: why the 2 °C goal is a political delusion," Nature, Nature, vol. 459(7249), pages 909-909, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shan, Yuli & Liu, Zhu & Guan, Dabo, 2016. "CO2 emissions from China’s lime industry," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 245-252.
    2. Liu, Xiaoyu & Duan, Zhiyuan & Shan, Yuli & Duan, Haiyan & Wang, Shuo & Song, Junnian & Wang, Xian'en, 2019. "Low-carbon developments in Northeast China: Evidence from cities," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 236(C), pages 1019-1033.
    3. Tomohiro Oda & Rostyslav Bun & Vitaliy Kinakh & Petro Topylko & Mariia Halushchak & Gregg Marland & Thomas Lauvaux & Matthias Jonas & Shamil Maksyutov & Zbigniew Nahorski & Myroslava Lesiv & Olha Dany, 2019. "Errors and uncertainties in a gridded carbon dioxide emissions inventory," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 24(6), pages 1007-1050, August.
    4. Khrystyna Boychuk & Rostyslav Bun, 2014. "Regional spatial inventories (cadastres) of GHG emissions in the Energy sector: Accounting for uncertainty," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 124(3), pages 561-574, June.
    5. Emily McGlynn & Serena Li & Michael Berger & Meredith Amend & Kandice Harper, 2022. "Addressing uncertainty and bias in land use, land use change, and forestry greenhouse gas inventories," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 170(1), pages 1-25, January.
    6. Jörg Verstraete, 2019. "Solving the general map overlay problem using a fuzzy inference system designed for spatial disaggregation," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 24(6), pages 1101-1122, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richard Heede, 2014. "Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil fuel and cement producers, 1854–2010," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 122(1), pages 229-241, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:124:y:2014:i:3:p:459-476. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.