The Energy Modeling Forum (EMF)-30 study on short-lived climate forcers: introduction and overview
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The Energy Modeling Forum (EMF)-30 study on short-lived climate forcers: introduction and overview Steven J. Smith 1 & Zbigniew Klimont 2 & Laurent Drouet 3 & Mathijs Harmsen 4,5 & Gunnar Luderer 6,7 & Keywan Riahi 2 & Detlef P. van Vuuren 4,5 & John P. Weyant 8 Received: 26 October 2020 / Accepted: 5 November 2020/ # Battelle Memorial Institute 2020
1 Introduction Anthropogenic climate change is driven largely by changes in atmospheric energy balance, termed radiative forcing. Carbon dioxide is the dominant driver of these changes, but a suite of other greenhouse gases, air pollutants, and land-use changes also impact the climate (Myhre et al. 2013). While changes in carbon dioxide emissions have impacts ranging over decades to centuries, there are a number of species that impact the climate primarily in the nearer term due to shorter atmospheric lifetimes. These short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs) include methane, aerosols, HFCs, and tropospheric ozone (and precursor emissions). Because, by definition, SLCFs have a relatively short atmospheric lifetimes, there has been a growing interest in developing strategies to reduce their emissions and consequently mitigate near-term climate change. See Harmsen et al. (2019b, 2020) and Smith et al. (2020) in this issue for literature review and discussion of previous work. Many of the SLCFs are also air pollutants or air pollution precursors so reducing SLCF emissions will generally lead to reductions in air pollutant–related mortality and economic impacts, as also examined in this special issue. The Energy Modeling Forum inter-comparison study on short-lived climate forcers (EMF30) focuses on black carbon (BC) and methane (CH4), two of the most important warming SLCFs. The study is aimed at quantifying the potential impact of methane and BC-focused reductions on climate change and at comparing the impact of idealized SLCF reductions as compared to idealized GHG reduction policies of the type long-analyzed by the modeling community. The EMF-30 study takes a multi-model approach that includes nine integrated assessment models. Analysis of the interaction between dedicated SLCF and GHG reduction policies and This article is part of a Special Issue reporting results from the “Energy Modeling Forum (EMF)-30 Study on Short-Lived Climate Forcers (SLCF) and Air Quality” edited by John Weyant, Steven J Smith, and Zbigniew Klimont
* Steven J. Smith [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Climatic Change
the systematic implementation of stylized scenarios allows an assessment of the role of forcers individually and as they interact with different policy options. The multi-model analysis allows an assessment of how robust results are across different models and background scenario assumptions. The special issue consists of this overview, three cross-cutting papers that focus on different aspects of the multi-model analysis results (Harmsen et al. 2019a, b, Smith et al. 2020), and four papers expanding on this topic largely using indiv
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