National Institute for Environmental Studies

About: National Institute for Environmental Studies is a education organization based out in Tsukuba, Japan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Climate change. The organization has 3173 authors who have published 11412 publications receiving 374599 citations. The organization is also known as: NIES & Kokuritsu-Kankyō kenkyūsho.

The representative concentration pathways: an overview

Abstract: This paper summarizes the development process and main characteristics of the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), a set of four new pathways developed for the climate modeling community as a basis for long-term and near-term modeling experiments. The four RCPs together span the range of year 2100 radiative forcing values found in the open literature, i.e. from 2.6 to 8.5 W/m 2 . The RCPs are the product of an innovative collaboration between integrated assessment modelers, climate modelers, terrestrial ecosystem modelers and emission inventory experts. The resulting product forms a comprehensive data set with high spatial and sectoral resolutions for the period extending to 2100. Land use and emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases are reported mostly at a 0.5×0.5 degree spatial resolution, with air pollutants also provided per sector (for well-mixed gases, a coarser resolution is used). The underlying integrated assessment model outputs for land use, atmospheric emissions and concentration data were harmonized across models and scenarios to ensure consistency with historical observations while preserving individual scenario trends. For most variables, the RCPs cover a wide range of the existing literature. The RCPs are supplemented with extensions (Extended Concentration Pathways, ECPs), which allow

The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment

Abstract: Advances in the science and observation of climate change are providing a clearer understanding of the inherent variability of Earth's climate system and its likely response to human and natural influences. The implications of climate change for the environment and society will depend not only on the response of the Earth system to changes in radiative forcings, but also on how humankind responds through changes in technology, economies, lifestyle and policy. Extensive uncertainties exist in future forcings of and responses to climate change, necessitating the use of scenarios of the future to explore the potential consequences of different response options. To date, such scenarios have not adequately examined crucial possibilities, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, and have relied on research processes that slowed the exchange of information among physical, biological and social scientists. Here we describe a new process for creating plausible scenarios to investigate some of the most challenging and important questions about climate change confronting the global community.

The RCP greenhouse gas concentrations and their extensions from 1765 to 2300

Abstract: We present the greenhouse gas concentrations for the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and their extensions beyond 2100, the Extended Concentration Pathways (ECPs). These projections include all major anthropogenic greenhouse gases and are a result of a multi-year effort to produce new scenarios for climate change research. We combine a suite of atmospheric concentration observations and emissions estimates for greenhouse gases (GHGs) through the historical period (1750-2005) with harmonized emissions projected by four different Integrated Assessment Models for 2005-2100. As concentrations are somewhat dependent on the future climate itself (due to climate feedbacks in the carbon and other gas cycles), we emulate median response characteristics of models assessed in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report using the reduced-complexity carbon cycle climate model MAGICC6. Projected 'best-estimate' global-mean surface temperature increases (using inter alia a climate sensitivity of 3°C) range from 1.5°C by 2100 for the lowest of the four RCPs, called both RCP3-PD and RCP2.6, to 4.5°C for the highest one, RCP8.5, relative to pre-industrial levels. Beyond 2100, we present the ECPs that are simple extensions of the RCPs, based on the assumption of either smoothly stabilizing concentrations or constant emissions: For example,

The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: An overview

Abstract: This paper presents the overview of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and their energy, land use, and emissions implications. The SSPs are part of a new scenario framework, established by the climate change research community in order to facilitate the integrated analysis of future climate impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation, and mitigation. The pathways were developed over the last years as a joint community effort and describe plausible major global developments that together would lead in the future to different challenges for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The SSPs are based on five narratives describing alternative socio-economic developments, including sustainable development, regional rivalry, inequality, fossil-fueled development, and middle-of-the-road development. The long-term demographic and economic projections of the SSPs depict a wide uncertainty range consistent with the scenario literature. A multi-model approach was used for the elaboration of the energy, land-use and the emissions trajectories of SSP-based scenarios. The baseline scenarios lead to global energy consumption of 400–1200 EJ in 2100, and feature vastly different land-use dynamics, ranging from a possible reduction in cropland area up to a massive expansion by more than 700 million hectares by 2100. The associated annual CO 2 emissions of the baseline scenarios range from about 25 GtCO 2 to more than 120 GtCO 2 per year by 2100. With respect to mitigation, we find that associated costs strongly depend on three factors: (1) the policy assumptions, (2) the socio-economic narrative, and (3) the stringency of the target. The carbon price for reaching the target of 2.6 W/m 2 that is consistent with a temperature change limit of 2 °C, differs in our analysis thus by about a factor of three across the SSP marker scenarios. Moreover, many models could not reach this target from the SSPs with high mitigation challenges. While the SSPs were designed to represent different mitigation and adaptation challenges, the resulting narratives and quantifications span a wide range of different futures broadly representative of the current literature. This allows their subsequent use and development in new assessments and research projects. Critical next steps for the community scenario process will, among others, involve regional and sectoral extensions, further elaboration of the adaptation and impacts dimension, as well as employing the SSP scenarios with the new generation of earth system models as part of the 6th climate model intercomparison project (CMIP6).

Ubiquity and dominance of oxygenated species in organic aerosols in anthropogenically-influenced Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes

Abstract: Organic aerosol (OA) data acquired by the Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (AMS) in 37 field campaigns were deconvolved into hydrocarbon-like OA (HOA) and several types of oxygenated OA (OOA) components. HOA has been linked to primary combustion emissions (mainly from fossil fuel) and other primary sources such as meat cooking. OOA is ubiquitous in various atmospheric environments, on average accounting for 64%, 83% and 95% of the total OA in urban, urban downwind, and rural/remote sites, respectively. A case study analysis of a rural site shows that the OOA concentration is much greater than the advected HOA, indicating that HOA oxidation is not an important source of OOA, and that OOA increases are mainly due to SOA. Most global models lack an explicit representation of SOA which may lead to significant biases in the magnitude, spatial and temporal distributions of OA, and in aerosol hygroscopic properties.