RESUMEN
On 22 September 2020, within the backdrop of the COVID-19 global pandemic, China announced its climate goal for peak carbon emissions before 2030 and to reach carbon neutrality before 2060. This carbon-neutral goal is generally considered to cover all anthropogenic greenhouse gases. The planning effort is now in full swing in China, but the pathway to decarbonization is unclear. The needed transition towards non-fossil fuel energy and its impact on China and the world may be more profound than its reform and development over the past 40 years, but the challenges are enormous. Analysis of four representative scenarios shows significant differences in achieving the carbon-neutral goal, particularly the contribution of non-fossil fuel energy sources. The high target values for nuclear, wind, and bioenergy have approached their corresponding resource limitations, with solar energy being the exception, suggesting solar's critical role. We also found that the near-term policies that allow for a gradual transition, followed by more drastic changes after 2030, can eventually reach the carbon-neutral goal and lead to less of a reduction in cumulative emissions, thus inconsistent with the IPCC 1.5°C scenario. The challenges and prospects are discussed in the historical context of China's socio-economic reform, globalization, international collaboration, and development.
RESUMEN
Removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) combined with emission reduction is necessary to keep climate warming below the internationally agreed upon 2°C target. Soil organic carbon sequestration through agricultural management has been proposed as a means to lower atmospheric CO2 concentration, but the magnitude needed to meaningfully lower temperature is unknown. We show that sequestration of 0.68 Pg C year-1 for 85 years could lower global temperature by 0.1°C in 2100 when combined with a low emission trajectory [Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6]. This value is potentially achievable using existing agricultural management approaches, without decreasing land area for food production. Existing agricultural mitigation approaches could lower global temperature by up to 0.26°C under RCP 2.6 or as much as 25% of remaining warming to 2°C. This declines to 0.14°C under RCP 8.5. Results were sensitive to assumptions regarding the duration of carbon sequestration rates, which is poorly constrained by data. Results provide a framework for the potential role of agricultural soil organic carbon sequestration in climate change mitigation.
RESUMEN
Sea surface temperature (SST) records are subject to potential biases due to changing instrumentation and measurement practices. Significant differences exist between commonly used composite SST reconstructions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Extended Reconstruction Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST), the Hadley Centre SST data set (HadSST3), and the Japanese Meteorological Agency's Centennial Observation-Based Estimates of SSTs (COBE-SST) from 2003 to the present. The update from ERSST version 3b to version 4 resulted in an increase in the operational SST trend estimate during the last 19 years from 0.07° to 0.12°C per decade, indicating a higher rate of warming in recent years. We show that ERSST version 4 trends generally agree with largely independent, near-global, and instrumentally homogeneous SST measurements from floating buoys, Argo floats, and radiometer-based satellite measurements that have been developed and deployed during the past two decades. We find a large cooling bias in ERSST version 3b and smaller but significant cooling biases in HadSST3 and COBE-SST from 2003 to the present, with respect to most series examined. These results suggest that reported rates of SST warming in recent years have been underestimated in these three data sets.
RESUMEN
Metals are used in a variety of ways, many of which lead to dissipative releases to the environment. Such releases are relevant from both a resource use and an environmental impact perspective. We present a historical analysis of copper dissipative releases in the United States from 1975 to 2000. We situate all dissipative releases in copper's life cycle and introduce a conceptual framework by which copper dissipative releases may be categorized in terms of intentionality of use and release. We interpret our results in the context of larger trends in production and consumption and government policies that have served as drivers of intentional copper releases from the relevant sources. Intentional copper releases are found to be both significant in quantity and highly variable. In 1975, for example, the largest source of intentional releases was from the application of copper-based pesticides, and this decreased more than 50% over the next 25 years; all other sources of intentional releases increased during that period. Overall, intentional copper releases decreased by approximately 15% from 1975 to 2000. Intentional uses that are unintentionally released such as copper from roofing, increased by the same percentage. Trace contaminant sources such as fossil fuel combustion, i.e., sources where both the use and the release are unintended, increased by nearly 50%. Intentional dissipative uses are equivalent to 60% of unintentional copper dissipative releases and more than five times that from trace sources. Dissipative copper releases are revealed to be modest when compared to bulk copper flows in the economy, and we introduce a metric, the dissipation index, which may be considered an economy-wide measure of resource efficiency for a particular substance. We assess the importance of dissipative releases in the calculation of recycling rates, concluding that the inclusion of dissipation in recycling rate calculations has a small, but discernible, influence, and should be included in such calculations.