Joint Global Change Research Institute

About: Joint Global Change Research Institute is a facility organization based out in Riverdale Park, Maryland, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Greenhouse gas & Climate change. The organization has 197 authors who have published 934 publications receiving 62390 citations.

Global economic consequences of deploying bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)

Abstract: Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is considered a potential source of net negative carbon emissions and, if deployed at sufficient scale, could help reduce carbon dioxide emissions and concentrations. However, the viability and economic consequences of large-scale BECCS deployment are not fully understood. We use the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) integrated assessment model to explore the potential global and regional economic impacts of BECCS. As a negative-emissions technology, BECCS would entail a net subsidy in a policy environment in which carbon emissions are taxed. We show that by mid-century, in a world committed to limiting climate change to 2 °C, carbon tax revenues have peaked and are rapidly approaching the point where climate mitigation is a net burden on general tax revenues. Assuming that the required policy instruments are available to support BECCS deployment, we consider its effects on global trade patterns of fossil fuels, biomass, and agricultural products. We find that in a world committed to limiting climate change to 2 °C, the absence of CCS harms fossil-fuel exporting regions, while the presence of CCS, and BECCS in particular, allows greater continued use and export of fossil fuels. We also explore the relationship between carbon prices, food-crop prices and use of BECCS. We show that the carbon price and biomass and food crop prices are directly related. We also show that BECCS reduces the upward pressure on food crop prices by lowering carbon prices and lowering the total biomass demand in climate change mitigation scenarios. All of this notwithstanding, many challenges, both technical and institutional, remain to be addressed before BECCS can be deployed at scale.

Evaluating regional vulnerability to climate change: purposes and methods

Abstract: As the emphasis in climate change research, international negotiations, and developing-country activities has shifted from mitigation to adaptation, vulnerability has emerged as a bridge between impacts on one side and the need for adaptive changes on the other. Still, the term vulnerability remains abstract, its meaning changing with the scale, focus, and purpose of each assessment. Understanding regional vulnerability has advanced over the past several decades, with studies using a combination of indicators, case studies and analogues, stakeholder-driven processes, and scenario-building methodologies. As regions become increasingly relevant scales of inquiry for bridging the aggregate and local, for every analysis, it is perhaps most appropriate to ask three “what” questions: “What/who is vulnerable?,” “What is vulnerability?,” and “Vulnerable to what?” The answers to these questions will yield different definitions of vulnerability as well as different methods for assessing it.

The value of soil respiration measurements for interpreting and modeling terrestrial carbon cycling

Abstract: An acceleration of model-data synthesis activities has leveraged many terrestrial carbon datasets, but utilization of soil respiration (RS) data has not kept pace. We identify three major challenges in interpreting RS data, and opportunities to utilize it more extensively and creatively: (1) When RS is compared to ecosystem respiration (RECO) measured from EC towers, it is not uncommon to find RS > RECO. We argue this is most likely due to difficulties in calculating RECO, which provides an opportunity to utilize RS for EC quality control. (2) RS integrates belowground heterotrophic and autotrophic activity, but many models include only an explicit heterotrophic output. Opportunities exist to use the total RS flux for data assimilation and model benchmarking methods rather than less-certain partitioned fluxes. (3) RS is generally measured at a very different resolution than that needed for comparison to EC or ecosystem- to global-scale models. Downscaling EC fluxes to match the scale of RS, and improvement of RS upscaling techniques will improve resolution challenges. RS data can bring a range of benefits to model development, particularly with larger databases and improved data sharing protocols to make RS data more robust and broadly available to the research community.