An analysis of avoided impacts on climate extremes when comparing RCP8.5 and RCP4.5, as part of the BRACE project.

Abstract:

We present an overview of detected changes in various aspect of the climate system, both for mean quantities and extremes, while comparing two different scenarios (RCP8.5 and RCP4.5) that were run by the CESM1-CAM5 model with large initial condition ensembles, designed to make the detection robust by sampling internal variability exhaustively. This analysis is one of many organized under the Benefits of Reducing Anthropogenic Climate change (BRACE) project of the Climate and Human System Project at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which focuses on the question of avoided impacts. The differences experienced by the physical system are just the most immediate aspects of avoided impacts, and underpin the explanation of the differences that would be experienced by natural and human systems, which other presentations within this session address.