Path independence of climate and carbon cycle response over a broad range of cumulative carbon emissions

Herrington, T.; Zickfeld, K.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-5-409-2014

Articles | Volume 5, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-5-409-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-5-409-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 5, issue 2

Research article

|

24 Nov 2014

Research article |

| 24 Nov 2014

Path independence of climate and carbon cycle response over a broad range of cumulative carbon emissions

T. Herrington and K. Zickfeld

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Final revised paper (published on 24 Nov 2014)
Preprint (discussion started on 17 Jun 2014)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC C295: 'what about permafrost soil carbon?', David Archer, 07 Jul 2014
RC C309: 'Interactive comment', Anonymous Referee #2, 22 Jul 2014
AC C408: 'Authors' response to reviewer comments', Kirsten Zickfeld, 31 Aug 2014

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Kirsten Zickfeld on behalf of the Authors (02 Oct 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (13 Oct 2014) by Matthew Huber

AR by Kirsten Zickfeld on behalf of the Authors (15 Oct 2014) Manuscript

Short summary

Recent studies have identified an approximately proportional relationship between global warming and cumulative carbon emissions. This relationship – referred to as the transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions (TCRE) – is useful for climate policy applications. We show that the TCRE is constant for cumulative emissions lower than ~1500GtC but declines for higher cumulative emissions. We also find the TCRE to decrease with increasing emission rate.