On determining the point of no return in climate change

van Zalinge, Brenda C.; Feng, Qing Yi; Aengenheyster, Matthias; Dijkstra, Henk A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-707-2017

Articles | Volume 8, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-707-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-707-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 8, issue 3

Research article

|

09 Aug 2017

Research article |

| 09 Aug 2017

On determining the point of no return in climate change

Brenda C. van Zalinge, Qing Yi Feng, Matthias Aengenheyster, and Henk A. Dijkstra

Data sets

PNRESD: Data for "On determining the point of no return in climate change'' B. Van Zalinge, Q. Y. Feng, M. Aengenheyster, and H. A. Dijkstra https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.838675

Short summary

The increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) is one of the main causes for the increase in global mean surface temperature. There is no good quantitative measure to determine when it is too late to start reducing GHGs in order to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference. We develop a method for determining a so-called point of no return (PNR) for several GHG emission scenarios. The innovative element in this approach is the applicability to high-dimensional climate models.