Articles | Volume 17, issue 11
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4533-2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4533-2024
Review and perspective paper
 | Highlight paper
 | 
05 Jun 2024
Review and perspective paper | Highlight paper |  | 05 Jun 2024

A perspective on the next generation of Earth system model scenarios: towards representative emission pathways (REPs)

Malte Meinshausen, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Kathleen Beyer, Greg Bodeker, Olivier Boucher, Josep G. Canadell, John S. Daniel, Aïda Diongue-Niang, Fatima Driouech, Erich Fischer, Piers Forster, Michael Grose, Gerrit Hansen, Zeke Hausfather, Tatiana Ilyina, Jarmo S. Kikstra, Joyce Kimutai, Andrew D. King, June-Yi Lee, Chris Lennard, Tabea Lissner, Alexander Nauels, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Hans Pörtner, Joeri Rogelj, Maisa Rojas, Joyashree Roy, Bjørn H. Samset, Benjamin M. Sanderson, Roland Séférian, Sonia Seneviratne, Christopher J. Smith, Sophie Szopa, Adelle Thomas, Diana Urge-Vorsatz, Guus J. M. Velders, Tokuta Yokohata, Tilo Ziehn, and Zebedee Nicholls

Related authors

fair-calibrate v1.4.1: calibration, constraining and validation of the FaIR simple climate model for reliable future climate projections
Chris Smith, Donald P. Cummins, Hege-Beate Fredriksen, Zebedee Nicholls, Malte Meinshausen, Myles Allen, Stuart Jenkins, Nicholas Leach, Camilla Mathison, and Antti-Ilari Partanen
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-708,https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-708, 2024
Short summary
Multi-century dynamics of the climate and carbon cycle under both high and net negative emissions scenarios
Charles D. Koven, Vivek K. Arora, Patricia Cadule, Rosie A. Fisher, Chris D. Jones, David M. Lawrence, Jared Lewis, Keith Lindsay, Sabine Mathesius, Malte Meinshausen, Michael Mills, Zebedee Nicholls, Benjamin M. Sanderson, Roland Séférian, Neil C. Swart, William R. Wieder, and Kirsten Zickfeld
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 885–909, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-885-2022,https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-885-2022, 2022
Short summary
From emission scenarios to spatially resolved projections with a chain of computationally efficient emulators: coupling of MAGICC (v7.5.1) and MESMER (v0.8.3)
Lea Beusch, Zebedee Nicholls, Lukas Gudmundsson, Mathias Hauser, Malte Meinshausen, and Sonia I. Seneviratne
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 2085–2103, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2085-2022,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2085-2022, 2022
Short summary
Country-resolved combined emission and socio-economic pathways based on the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) and Shared Socio-Economic Pathway (SSP) scenarios
Johannes Gütschow, M. Louise Jeffery, Annika Günther, and Malte Meinshausen
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 1005–1040, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-1005-2021,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-1005-2021, 2021
Short summary
Climate model projections from the Scenario Model Intercomparison Project (ScenarioMIP) of CMIP6
Claudia Tebaldi, Kevin Debeire, Veronika Eyring, Erich Fischer, John Fyfe, Pierre Friedlingstein, Reto Knutti, Jason Lowe, Brian O'Neill, Benjamin Sanderson, Detlef van Vuuren, Keywan Riahi, Malte Meinshausen, Zebedee Nicholls, Katarzyna B. Tokarska, George Hurtt, Elmar Kriegler, Jean-Francois Lamarque, Gerald Meehl, Richard Moss, Susanne E. Bauer, Olivier Boucher, Victor Brovkin, Young-Hwa Byun, Martin Dix, Silvio Gualdi, Huan Guo, Jasmin G. John, Slava Kharin, YoungHo Kim, Tsuyoshi Koshiro, Libin Ma, Dirk Olivié, Swapna Panickal, Fangli Qiao, Xinyao Rong, Nan Rosenbloom, Martin Schupfner, Roland Séférian, Alistair Sellar, Tido Semmler, Xiaoying Shi, Zhenya Song, Christian Steger, Ronald Stouffer, Neil Swart, Kaoru Tachiiri, Qi Tang, Hiroaki Tatebe, Aurore Voldoire, Evgeny Volodin, Klaus Wyser, Xiaoge Xin, Shuting Yang, Yongqiang Yu, and Tilo Ziehn
Earth Syst. Dynam., 12, 253–293, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-253-2021,https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-253-2021, 2021
Short summary

Related subject area

Climate and Earth system modeling
Implementing detailed nucleation predictions in the Earth system model EC-Earth3.3.4: sulfuric acid–ammonia nucleation
Carl Svenhag, Moa K. Sporre, Tinja Olenius, Daniel Yazgi, Sara M. Blichner, Lars P. Nieradzik, and Pontus Roldin
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 4923–4942, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4923-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4923-2024, 2024
Short summary
Modeling biochar effects on soil organic carbon on croplands in a microbial decomposition model (MIMICS-BC_v1.0)
Mengjie Han, Qing Zhao, Xili Wang, Ying-Ping Wang, Philippe Ciais, Haicheng Zhang, Daniel S. Goll, Lei Zhu, Zhe Zhao, Zhixuan Guo, Chen Wang, Wei Zhuang, Fengchang Wu, and Wei Li
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 4871–4890, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4871-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4871-2024, 2024
Short summary
Hector V3.2.0: functionality and performance of a reduced-complexity climate model
Kalyn Dorheim, Skylar Gering, Robert Gieseke, Corinne Hartin, Leeya Pressburger, Alexey N. Shiklomanov, Steven J. Smith, Claudia Tebaldi, Dawn L. Woodard, and Ben Bond-Lamberty
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 4855–4869, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4855-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4855-2024, 2024
Short summary
Evaluation of CMIP6 model simulations of PM2.5 and its components over China
Fangxuan Ren, Jintai Lin, Chenghao Xu, Jamiu A. Adeniran, Jingxu Wang, Randall V. Martin, Aaron van Donkelaar, Melanie S. Hammer, Larry W. Horowitz, Steven T. Turnock, Naga Oshima, Jie Zhang, Susanne Bauer, Kostas Tsigaridis, Øyvind Seland, Pierre Nabat, David Neubauer, Gary Strand, Twan van Noije, Philippe Le Sager, and Toshihiko Takemura
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 4821–4836, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4821-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4821-2024, 2024
Short summary
Assessment of a tiling energy budget approach in a land surface model, ORCHIDEE-MICT (r8205)
Yi Xi, Chunjing Qiu, Yuan Zhang, Dan Zhu, Shushi Peng, Gustaf Hugelius, Jinfeng Chang, Elodie Salmon, and Philippe Ciais
Geosci. Model Dev., 17, 4727–4754, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4727-2024,https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-4727-2024, 2024
Short summary

Cited articles

Asaadi, A., Schwinger, J., Lee, H., Tjiputra, J., Arora, V., Séférian, R., Liddicoat, S., Hajima, T., Santana-Falcón, Y., and Jones, C. D.: Carbon cycle feedbacks in an idealized simulation and a scenario simulation of negative emissions in CMIP6 Earth system models, Biogeosciences, 21, 411–435, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-411-2024, 2024. 
Beusch, L., Gudmundsson, L., and Seneviratne, S. I.: Emulating Earth system model temperatures with MESMER: from global mean temperature trajectories to grid-point-level realizations on land, Earth Syst. Dynam., 11, 139–159, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-139-2020, 2020. 
Beusch, L., Nauels, A., Gudmundsson, L., Gütschow, J., Schleussner, C.-F., and Seneviratne, S. I.: Responsibility of major emitters for country-level warming and extreme hot years, Commu. Earth Environ., 3, 7, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-021-00320-6, 2022a. 
Beusch, L., Nicholls, Z., Gudmundsson, L., Hauser, M., Meinshausen, M., and Seneviratne, S. I.: From emission scenarios to spatially resolved projections with a chain of computationally efficient emulators: coupling of MAGICC (v7.5.1) and MESMER (v0.8.3), Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 2085–2103, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-2085-2022, 2022b. 
Brunner, L., Pendergrass, A. G., Lehner, F., Merrifield, A. L., Lorenz, R., and Knutti, R.: Reduced global warming from CMIP6 projections when weighting models by performance and independence, Earth Syst. Dynam., 11, 995–1012, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-11-995-2020, 2020. 
Download
Executive editor
Common pathway frameworks are a critical part of the commonality that underpins the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) and feed forward into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports. This paper presents the perspective of an broad section of the climate modelling community on the desirable form and content of pathways for the CMIP7 cycle and beyond.
Short summary
The scientific community is considering new scenarios to succeed RCPs and SSPs for the next generation of Earth system model runs to project future climate change. To contribute to that effort, we reflect on relevant policy and scientific research questions and suggest categories for representative emission pathways. These categories are tailored to the Paris Agreement long-term temperature goal, high-risk outcomes in the absence of further climate policy and worlds “that could have been”.