Achieving the Paris Agreement Temperature Targets after Overshoot

There is a growing awareness that global temperatures will overshoot the 1.5 °C warming target of the Paris Agreement. The PRATO project has addressed various issues related to temperature overshoot, with a focus on i) earth system responses and feedbacks during temperature overshoot, ii) mitigation efforts and greenhouse gas (GHG) removal technologies required to reduce warming to 1.5 °C after overshoot, and iii) policy and planning tools, such as the remaining carbon budget and the GHG emission metrics, to support such mitigation efforts. Our project used a range of models, including earth system models, reduced-complexity climate models, integrated assessment models (IAMs), and simple climate-economy models. Two methodological developments from this project are i) a reduced-complexity climate model coupled with an energy system model, which allows an assessment of CO2 and CH4 mitigation by directly accounting for their distinct atmospheric characteristics, and ii) an emulator of IAMs, which is now used as the method to extend emissions scenarios till 2300 in two Horizon Europe projects.

The laureate has authored or co-authored a total of 30 peer-reviewed papers over the four-year project period in journals such as Nature, Nature Geoscience, Nature Communications, and Science Advances. The laureate was given an opportunity to present his first-authored paper to the delegates at the Bonn Climate Change Conference in June 2023 as part of the IPCC in-session technical workshop on GHG emission metrics. The project has led to the establishment of a new research team on climate and economy at the host laboratory LSCE, as a basis for research collaborations with institutes in Austria, China, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the UK, as well as within France. The laureate supervised three postdocs, four PhD students, and one master intern from five different countries.