中国国家主席习近平于2020年承诺在2060年前实现碳中和，此后中国围绕能源转型的思路发生了巨大转变。
然而，尽管此后中国出台了一系列重大政策，但目前仍不明确什么是新的能源系统，以及中国实现碳中和目标的最有效途径是什么。
我们的最新研究为中国能源转型建立了三种情景模型：一种是中国在2055年前建立净零排放的能源系统；一种是中国在2055年左右实现这一目标；还有一种是推断当前发展趋势的基线情景。
我们发现，将能效措施、终端用能消费电气化和基于各种可再生能源（如太阳能和风能）的低碳电力供应结合起来，可以极大地帮助该国在2055年前实现脱碳目标。
在最高情景下，中国的电力部门到2055年将不使用化石燃料，而一些行业将继续使用少量煤炭和天然气。然而，配备碳捕集与封存技术的生物质发电厂所产生的负排放将对此起到平衡作用。
双碳目标如何改变局势
2020年9月，当习近平开始在联合国大会上发表演讲时，几乎无人预料到中国会发表如此具有开创性的宣言。
他说：“中国将力争2030年前实现碳达峰、2060年前实现碳中和。”
这一政策现在更多地被称为“双碳”目标。
这句话改变了人们对中国能源转型的整体认识。
在此之前，中国在2017年“十九大”上的目标是“要推进能源生产和消费革命，构建清洁低碳、安全高效的能源体系。”
而习近平在2020年的讲话将中国的优先发展从实现“低碳”转变为实现“碳中和”，使能源部门从至少包括部分化石燃料消费，转变为一旦实现碳中和就几乎不给煤炭、石油和天然气留下空间。
要实现这一转变，需要处于中国政策体系和能源系统的利益相关者，如主要发电企业，真正改变思维方式。
中国在宣布碳中和目标后立即开始行动：国务院推出了“1+N”政策体系，其中包括实现“双碳”目标的总体纲领性文件（“1”）和实施该战略的一系列更具体的指导方针和法规（“N”）。
到目前为止，这些政策主要侧重于在2030年之前实现碳达峰。不过，在2060年之前实现碳中和的长期目标始终存在。
国家能源局发布了一份新型电力系统发展蓝皮书。在更广泛的层面上，多个政府部门已提出要为实现碳中和而推动整个能源系统——而不仅仅是电力系统——进行转型。
因此，今天中国能源转型的基础比习近平宣布之前更加坚实和精确。现在的问题是：新型能源系统将是什么样子，中国将如何实现这一目标？
中国能源转型的三种情景
为了回答这些问题，我们的研究模拟了中国能源转型的三种情景：一种是中国在2055年前建立一个净零排放的能源系统；一种是中国在2055年左右实现这一目标；还有一种是推断当前发展趋势的基线情景。
该分析基于一种详细的自下而上的建模方法，同时将“美丽中国”愿景——实现“绿色和高质量增长”的官方倡议——作为转型的指导方针。
在我们的模型中，能源转型的总体战略包括三个紧密相连的行动：
- 提高整个供应链的能源效率；
- 尽可能使终端用能部门电气化；
- 将电力部门转变为以太阳能和风能为支柱的“绿色”、无化石能源部门。
（政府间气候变化专门委员会的最新评估报告显示，这些是将升温控制在1.5°C或2°C的所有全球路径的关键要素。）
遵循这一战略的结果是，中国的能源系统将能够为中国可持续的经济增长提供动能，同时实现净零碳排放、空气质量改善和高水平的能源安全。
在最高情景下，中国的电力系统将从2045年起实现碳中和，整个能源系统将在2055年前实现碳中和。
与今天的情况相比，尽管经济有所增长，但2060年的一次能源消费总量将有所下降。此外，煤炭、石油和天然气将几乎被逐步淘汰，对进口化石燃料的依赖将被消除。
下图显示了2021年中国经济的能流（上图）与2060年在最高情景下的能流（下图）的对比。
在左侧，各版块显示了流入经济的一次能源来源，如煤炭（黑色）、天然气（粉红色）、石油（灰色），以及非化石燃料，如核能（棕色）、水能（深蓝色）、风能（浅蓝色）和太阳能（黄色）。
各版块的中心都显示了一次能源转化为更有用形式的过程，如电力或精炼油产品。化石燃料中所含的大部分一次能源在这一阶段以废热的形式被浪费（“损失”）。
右侧是按部门划分的最终能源用户。
最值得注意的是，化石燃料（尤其是煤炭）是2021年最大的能源来源，而在雄心勃勃的2060年情景（见下图）中，低碳能源则占主导地位。
中国能源转型的三个阶段
我们的研究表明，转型之路将分为三个主要阶段。第一阶段是2030年前的碳达峰。
在此期间，风电和光伏发电的部署将继续增加，同时工业和交通部门的电气化也将取得进展。
然而，就一次能源消费总量而言，煤炭和石油仍将是最主要的初级能源消费。
接下来是“能源革命”阶段，从2030年到2050年。在这一阶段，光电和风电将成为电力供应的主要来源，终端用能部门的电气化程度将大幅提高。
摒弃化石燃料可以最大限度地减少发电和提炼过程中的废热损失。同时，利用可再生能源生产的“绿氢”在工业领域将变得越来越重要。
第三阶段是巩固阶段，从2050年到2060年。脱碳发生在钢铁和化工等难以实现电气化的细分部门，旧的风光发电厂将被新的风光发电厂取代，能源组合中剩余的化石燃料几乎被淘汰。
煤电成为灵活性提供者
虽然中国政府计划从2025年起“逐步淘汰”煤炭，但根据当前的政策方针和市场情况，我们估计在三种情景中，煤电装机都不会迅速消失。
相反，燃煤电厂将逐渐成为保障能源安全和满足电力需求高峰的能力提供者，而不再进行大量发电。
当燃煤电厂达到30年左右的预期寿命时就将被关闭，而不会被新的煤电装机所取代。如下图所示，在我们最高情景中，最后一批煤电厂将于2055年关闭。
图中上半部分显示了2021年至2060年燃煤电厂的装机容量，下半部分显示了燃煤电厂的发电量。
与此同时，在我们的情景中，天然气在电力部门作用有限。这是因为光电和风电可以提供更便宜的电力，而现有的燃煤电厂——加上储能和需求侧响应设施的大规模扩张——足以提供灵活性和调峰能力。
管理由多变的风电和光电主导的电网
依赖光电和风电作为主要电力来源的能源系统，需要采取特殊的灵活性措施促成供需有效匹配。
下图显示了在2055年前实现碳中和的雄心勃勃的情景下，2060年夏季一周内每小时电力平衡的模拟示例。
图中上半部分显示的是供应侧发电量。在白天，光电（黄色）在电力生产中占主导地位，而风电厂（浅蓝）在24小时内都有更稳定的输出。
在傍晚和夜间，储能（紫色）会被释放，水力发电量（深蓝）高于白天。
图中下半部分显示的是需求侧的用电情况。储能（紫色）在白天充电，电动汽车智能充电（蓝色）在一周内提供灵活性。
作为后备电源，电动汽车车网互动发挥着重要作用——其不一定是重要的能源供应商，而是在风电和光电输出有限时，成为必要时可以启用的最后手段。该方案是保证电力系统容量充足的一种经济、高效的方法。
在2055年之前，煤电厂同样可能是电力系统可靠且经济的容量提供者，尽管如前所述，其平均发电量并不高。
从日常调度（管理供需的过程）的角度来看，这种创造灵活性的方式似乎很复杂。然而，一个高效且运作良好的电力市场（包括消费者和生产者）可以做到这一点。
消除各省之间的电力交易障碍、构建全国统一的电力市场，将是实现这一目标的关键因素。
未来远景规划
我们在《中国能源转型展望》（China Energy Transformation Outlook）中的情景对净零排放能源系统的长期未来提供了一系列量化远景规划。
我们对电力系统和其他能源终端用能部门建立了详细的模型，从而可以将这一新能源系统的发展与实现这一转变的政策措施联系起来。
我们研究得出的一个关键结论与上述中国能源转型不同阶段的时机有关。我们的模型表明，成功协调这些阶段至关重要，这样才能在保持能源安全的同时避免对能源基础设施进行不必要的投资。
我们情景中的其他关键推动因素包括扩大电网所需投资、国家电力市场的发展和对能源系统灵活性的支持。
即使有最优的远景规划和从我们的路径中获得的洞见，中国要实现2060年的目标仍有许多需要克服的挑战和障碍。
然而，我们的情景表明，有一些可行且具有成本效益的路径可以在不等待新技术突破的情况下实施。
The post 嘉宾来稿：中国能源系统如何在2055年前实现碳中和 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Trump’s latest climate rollback
RULES REPEALED: The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun dismantling Biden-era regulations limiting pollution from power plants, including carbon dioxide emissions, reported the Financial Times. Announcing the repeal, climate-sceptic EPA administrator Lee Zeldin labelled efforts to fight climate change a “cult”, according to the New York Times. Politico said that these actions are the “most important EPA regulatory actions of Donald Trump’s second term to date”.
WEBSITE SHUTDOWN: The Guardian reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Climate.gov website “will imminently no longer publish new content” after all production staff were fired. Former employees of the agency interviewed by the Guardian believe the cuts were “specifically aimed at restricting public-facing climate information”.
EVS TARGETED: The Los Angeles Times reported that Trump signed legislation on Thursday “seeking to rescind California’s ambitious auto emission standards, including a landmark rule that eventually would have barred sales of new gas-only cars in California by 2035”.
UK goes nuclear
NEW NUCLEAR: In her first spending review, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves announced £14.2bn for the Sizewell C new nuclear power plant in Suffolk, England – the first new state-backed nuclear power station for decades and the first ever under a Labour government, BBC News reported. The government also announced funding for three small nuclear reactors to be built by Rolls-Royce, said the Times. Carbon Brief has just published a chart showing the “rise, fall and rise” of UK nuclear.
MILIBAND REWARDED: The Times described energy secretary Ed Miliband as one of the “biggest winners” from the review. In spite of relentless negative reporting around him from right-leaning publications, his Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) received the largest relative increase in capital spending. Carbon Brief’s summary has more on all the key climate and energy takeaways from the spending review.
Around the world
- UN OCEAN SUMMIT: In France, a “surge in support” brought the number of countries ratifying the High Seas Treaty to just 10 short of the 60 needed for the agreement to become international law, according to Sky News.
- CALLING TRUMP: Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he would “call” Trump to “persuade him” to attend COP30, according to Agence France-Presse. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that the country’s environmental agency has fast tracked oil and highway projects that threaten the Amazon.
- GERMAN FOSSIL SURGE: Due to “low” wind levels, electricity generation from renewables in Germany fell by 17% in the first quarter of this year, while generation from fossil-fuel sources increased significantly, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
- BATTERY BOOST: The power ministry in India announced 54bn rupees ($631m) in funding to build 30 gigawatt-hours of new battery energy storage systems to “ensure round-the-clock renewable energy capacities”, reported Money Control.
-19.3C
The temperature that one-in-10 London winters could reach in a scenario where a key Atlantic ocean current system “collapses” and global warming continues under “intermediate” emissions, according to new research covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- A study in Science Advances found that damage to coral reefs due to climate change will “outpace” reef expansion. It said “severe declines” will take place within 40-80 years, while “large-scale coral reef expansion requires centuries”.
- Climatic Change published research which identified “displacement and violence, caregiving burdens, early marriages of girls, human trafficking and food insecurity” as the main “mental health” stressors exacerbated by climate change for women in lower and middle-income countries.
- The weakening of a major ocean current system has partially offset the drying of the southern Amazon rainforest, research published in Environmental Research has found, demonstrating that climate tipping elements have the potential to moderate each other.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Aerosols – tiny light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – absorb or reflect incoming sunlight and influence the formation and brightness of clouds. In this way they have historically “acted as an invisible brake on global warming”. New Carbon Brief analysis by Dr Zeke Hausfather illustrated the extent to which a reduction in aerosol emissions in recent decades, while bringing widespread public health benefits through avoided deaths, has “unmasked” the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The chart above shows the estimated cooling effect of aerosols from the start of the industrial era until 2020.
Spotlight
How Carbon Brief turns complex research into visuals
This week, Carbon Brief’s interactive developer Tom Pearson explains how and why his team creates visuals from research papers.
Carbon Brief’s journalists will often write stories based on new scientific research or policy reports.
These documents will usually contain charts or graphics highlighting something interesting about the story. Sometimes, Carbon Brief’s visuals team will choose to recreate these graphics.
There are many reasons why we choose to spend time and effort doing this, but most often it can be boiled down to some combination of the following things.
Maintaining editorial and visual consistency
We want to, where possible, maintain editorial and visual consistency while matching our graphical and editorial style guides.
In doing this, we are trying to ease our audience’s reading experience. We hope that, by presenting a chart in a way that is consistent with Carbon Brief’s house style, readers will be able to concentrate on the story or the explanation we are trying to communicate and not the way that a chart might have been put together.
Highlighting relevant information
We want to highlight the part of a chart that is most relevant to the story.
Graphics in research papers, especially if they have been designed for a print context, often strive to illustrate many different points with a single figure.
We tend to use charts to answer a single question or provide evidence for a single point.
Paring charts back to their core “message”, removing extraneous elements and framing the chart with a clear editorial title helps with this, as the example below shows.
Ensuring audience understanding
We want to ensure our audience understands the “message” of the chart.
Graphics published in specialist publications, such as scientific journals, might have different expectations regarding a reader’s familiarity with the subject matter and the time they might be expected to spend reading an article.
If we can redraw a chart so that it meets the expectations of a more general audience, we will.
Supporting multiple contexts
We want our graphics to make sense in different contexts.
While we publish our graphics primarily in articles on our website, the nature of the internet means that we cannot guarantee that this is how people will encounter them.
Charts are often shared on social media or copy-pasted into presentations. We want to support these practices by including as much context relevant to understanding within the chart image as possible.
Below illustrates how adding a title and key information can make a chart easier to understand without supporting information.
When we do not recreate charts
When will we not redraw a chart? Most of the time! We are a small team and recreating data graphics requires time, effort, accessible data and often specialist software.
But, despite these constraints, when the conditions are right, the process of redrawing maps and charts allows us to communicate more clearly with our readers, transforming complex research into accessible visual stories.
Watch, read, listen
SPENDING $1BN ON CLIMATE: New Scientist interviewed Greg de Temmerman, former nuclear physicist turned chief science officer at Quadrature Climate Foundation, about the practicalities and ethics of philanthropic climate-science funding.
GENDER HURDLES: Research director Tracy Kajumba has written for Climate Home News about the barriers that women still face in attending and participating in COPs.
OCEAN HEATWAVES: The New York Times presented a richly illustrated look at how marine heatwaves are spreading across the globe and how they affect life in the oceans.
Coming up
- 16-26 June: Bonn climate talks, Bonn, Germany
- 16 June: 79th meeting of the World Meteorological Organization executive council, Geneva, Switzerland
- 17 June: International Energy Agency (IEA) Oil 2025 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- Inside Climate News, California environmental reporter | Salary: Unknown. Location: Southern California
- Natural Resources Wales, lead marine and energy policy advisor | Salary: £45,367-£50,877. Location: Wales
- Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, senior manager, climate | Salary: £82,000. Location: London/hybrid
- Green Party,social media and digital content officer | Salary: £33,211. Location: London/remote
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The UK’s chancellor Rachel Reeves gave the green light this week to the Sizewell C new nuclear plant in Suffolk, along with funding for “small modular reactors” (SMRs) and nuclear fusion.
In her spending review of government funding across the rest of this parliament, Reeves pledged £14.2bn for Sizewell C, £2.5bn for Rolls-Royce SMRs and £2.5bn for fusion research.
The UK was a pioneer in civilian nuclear power – opening the world’s first commercial reactor at Calder Hall in Cumbria in 1956 – which, ultimately, helped to squeeze out coal generation.
Over the decades that followed, the UK’s nuclear capacity climbed to a peak of 12.2 gigawatts (GW) in 1995, while electricity output from the fleet of reactors peaked in 1998.
The chart below shows the contribution of each of the UK’s nuclear plants to the country’s overall capacity, according to when they started and stopped operating.
The reactors are dotted around the UK’s coastline, where they can take advantage of cooling seawater, and many sites include multiple units coded with numbers or letters.
Since Sizewell B was completed in 1995, however, no new nuclear plants have been built – and, as the chart above shows, capacity has ebbed away as older reactors have gone out of service.
After a lengthy hiatus, the Hinkley C new nuclear plant in Somerset was signed off in 2016. It is now under construction and expected to start operating by 2030 at the earliest.
(Efforts to secure further new nuclear schemes at Moorside in Cumbria failed in 2017, while projects led by Hitachi at Wylfa on Anglesey and Oldbury in Gloucestershire collapsed in 2019.)
The additional schemes just given the go-ahead in Reeves’s spending review would – if successful – somewhat revive the UK’s nuclear capacity, after decades of decline.
However, with the closure of all but one of the UK’s existing reactors due by 2030, nuclear-power capacity would remain below its 1995 peak, unless further projects are built.
Moreover, with the UK’s electricity demand set to double over the next few decades, as transport, heat and industry are increasingly electrified, nuclear power is unlikely to match the 29% share of generation that it reached during the late 1990s.
There is an aspirational goal – set under former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson – for nuclear to supply “up to” a quarter of the UK’s electricity in 2050, with “up to” 24GW of capacity.
Assuming Sizewell B continues to operate until 2055 and that Hinkley C, Sizewell C and at least three Rolls-Royce SMRs are all built, this would take UK capacity back up to 9.0GW.
Methodology
The chart is based on data from the World Nuclear Association, with known start dates for operating and retired reactors, as well as planned closure dates announced by operator EDF.
The timeline for new reactors to start operating – and assumed 60-year lifetime – is illustrative, based on published information from EDF, Rolls-Royce, the UK government and media reports.
The post Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades
Recent years have seen a rapid succession of climate-related records broken.
To name just a few, the world has witnessed record warmth in the Atlantic, unprecedented glacier melt, all-time low Antarctic sea ice extent, the Amazon’s worst drought since observations began and UK temperatures soaring past 40C for the first time.
In a review article, published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, my coauthors and I look at how the frequency of weather records is changing as the planet warms.
We find that the number of hot temperature records observed around the world since 1950 far exceed what would be expected in a million years in a world without human-caused climate change.
Specifically, we show that “all-time” daily hot records on land were more than four times higher in 2016-24 than they would have been in a world without climate change.
Meanwhile, daily maximum rainfall records were up 40% over the same time period and record cold events were twice as rare.
A key finding of our research is that it is the pace of global warming that controls the occurrence of records.
We show that, if the pace of warming were to slow down, the frequency of record-breaking hot events would start to decline – even if global temperatures continue to rise.
Counting records
By definition, records are supposed to be rare events, at least in a system that is not changing.
Statistics of record occurrence are remarkably simple. They are expected to become rarer the longer a measurement series gets.
The chance of observing a new record after 20 years of measurement is one in 20, or 5%. And after 100 years of observations, the chances of a new record drops to 1%.
For example, this is why it becomes increasingly difficult to break records in athletics as time goes by, unless training methods or sports equipment improve.
Record-breaking weather events – for example, the highest windspeed, most intense rainfall or hot and cold temperatures – also face these odds in a climate that is “stationary”.
However, today’s climate is not stationary, but warming at a very high pace. This has significant implications for the record count.
The plot below shows how the frequency of all-time hot records (dashed red line) and record cold events (dashed blue line) has changed since the 1960s. This is compared to the probability that would be expected under a stationary climate (black line).
(The plot uses ERA5, a reanalysis dataset, which combines observations and models from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).)
It illustrates how the frequency of hot events declined more slowly than would be expected in a stationary climate since 1950, before increasing in the last 15 years. Meanwhile, the frequency of record cold events is declining more quickly than expected.
The record ratio
Tracking the ratio between the measured number of records and the one theoretically expected in a stationary climate – the “record ratio” – reveals the fingerprint of climate change.
Analysis of ERA5 data and Berkeley Earth surface temperature observations finds that the record ratio over the last decade for hot records over global land regions is more than four. For cold records, it is between 0.2 and 0.5, showing that record-breaking cold has declined
In other words, there were more than four times as many hot record events and less than half as many cold record events than would be expected without global warming.
In 2023 and 2024, the record ratio for hot events reached 5.5 and 6.2, respectively.
Record ratios tend to be higher over global oceans than on land. They are also higher for monthly or seasonal record temperatures than all-time daily records.
This is because natural variability in the climate tends to be smaller over oceans and for longer averaging periods, such as months and seasons.
Record counts directly relate to the relationship between rates of warming and natural fluctuations in the climate. This is sometimes referred to as the “signal-to-noise ratio”. (The “signal” being the long-term trend of climate change and “noise” referring to short-term fluctuations of natural variability.)
As a result, event types and regions with a higher signal-to-noise ratio tend to see a greater number of records.
Another way of illustrating the signal of climate change is by counting the total number of records in a measurement series.
In a stationary climate, there should be about five records in 100 years of temperature measurements, 7.5 in 1,000 years and less than 10 in 10,000 years.
However, our analysis of records in two measurement series shows how the number of record-breaking events has become significantly higher as the climate has changed.
For example, as the figure on the left below illustrates, a new annual record for average global temperature has been set 25 times over the past 175 years.
Meanwhile, the figure on the right shows how, in the Pacific north-west, a new five-day average heat record has been set 14 times within the last 75 years. The spike in temperature in 2021 reflects the brutal heatwave that killed hundreds of people and brought devastating wildfires that almost entirely destroyed the Canadian village of Lytton.
(In both figures, the warm records are marked by pink circles.)
According to fundamental laws of statistics, 14 new records would not be expected in more than a million years in a climate that is not warming.
It is worth noting that some climate variables, including ocean heat content, sea level rise and minimum glacier or ice sheet volumes, are changing so relentlessly that new record levels are currently set every year.
Record-shattering events
Record-shattering events are a subset of record-breaking events whose magnitude exceeds the previous event by a large margin.
In our research, we define this as more than one standard deviation, which is a measure of how spread out data is from the average.
(The exact value of standard deviation varies for different parts of the world. For example, when it comes to year-to-year average temperatures, one standard deviation is typically 2-3C in the Arctic, but less than 0.5C over the ocean).
These events of unprecedented intensity are often very impactful as they strongly exceed the conditions that society or ecosystems have experienced in the past.
The 2021 heatwave in the Pacific north-west, mentioned above, is a forbidding example.
Our research finds that the large number of record-shattering events in the past three decades is the consequence of a very high warming rate.
Using a simple timeseries model, we illustrate why the pace of warming is the key factor explaining the occurrence of record-shattering events.
In the left-hand figure, we assume a 150-year period of no warming followed by some linear warming at three different rates, which is a very simplistic approximation of historical and future warming pathways.
The right-hand figure illustrates what happens to the probability of record-shattering events in the Pacific north-west region under these three simplified pathways. It shows that the probability of record-shattering events at first rapidly increases and then stabilises. And the level at which the probability stabilises is greater the higher the rate of warming.
We therefore conclude that the high frequency of record-shattering hot extremes in recent years is controlled by the very high rate of warming caused by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
This tight coupling of record counts to the rate or speed of warming implies that there will be early benefits of slowing down global warming.
In our research, we look at how the probability of hot and cold records changes under different emissions reduction scenarios. To do this, we analysed the occurrence of record hot and cold events in climate model projections in the CMIP6 archive.
The figure below shows how stabilising temperatures by achieving net-zero carbon emissions (SSP1-1.9 and SSP1-2.6) will lead to a rapid decline of records, even if temperatures remain higher than in the historical period.
(It is worth noting that, while the number of records will decline under this lower-emissions scenario, the number of heatwaves would remain higher than today.)
Under intermediate (SSP2-4.5), high (SSP3-7.0) and very high emission (SSP5-8.5) scenarios, the number of records would continue to increase to levels much higher than today.
Rainfall records
We would also expect rainfall records to become progressively rarer in a stationary climate.
However, we find that record-breaking heavy precipitation occurred about 40% more often in 2015-24 than would be expected in a stationary climate. Many record-shattering heavy rainfall extremes occurred in the mid-latitudes and led to flooding which had large impacts.
(Calculating the frequency of records is more challenging for rainfall than for temperature, given small-scale variations and uncertainties in rainfall observations.)
The greater number of record-breaking rainfall events is due to an increase in precipitation intensity over most land regions as the atmosphere warms, as well as larger variations of rainfall intensity on a day-to-day, season-to-season and year-to-year basis .
We also find that the margin by which previous rainfall records are broken tends to become larger and larger in time. This is due to the “non-symmetric” distribution of rainfall – where there are many days with little precipitation, less with heavy precipitation and very few with very extreme precipitation.
It is therefore not surprising to see record-shattering precipitation events exceeding previous records by 20-50% in intensity, even if overall precipitation intensity increases by roughly 7% per degree of warming.
Preparing for the future
Efforts to adapt to climate change are typically informed by the worst events observed in recent generations.
This means that society is often underprepared for record-shattering events – which by their very definition are of unprecedented intensity.
Qualitative and quantitative storyline methods can offer insight into the many record-breaking events to come into the future – and, thus, help society prepare for escalating climate impacts.
These methods combine information from historical and paleoarchives, long measurement series, targeted climate model experiments, statistical and machine learning methods and weather forecasting systems.
Ultimately, these methods can improve society’s preparedness to climate change, so that the next record-shattering extreme does not come as a surprise.
The post Guest post: How climate change is fuelling record-breaking extreme weather appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: How climate change is fuelling record-breaking extreme weather
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