Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Global warming is one of the most important environmental challenges currently facing our generation. It has been clear for several decades that human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are driving a change in global temperatures, which will result in increasingly severe impacts on human and environmental systems. There are many aspects of the science of climate change, however, which are not well understood. In particular, there are substantial uncertainties with respect to how much of the greenhouse gases we emit remain in the atmosphere, as well as the amount by with those emissions influence the Earth's climate. Advancing our ability to measure the climate response to human greenhouse gas emissions is critical to efforts to decrease our impact on the climate system, as well as to prepare for the impacts of global warming. The overall objective of this research program is to expand and develop our understanding of how the climate system will respond to future greenhouse gas emissions. Recent research has identified a surprisingly linear climate response to cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide over time, which implies that each unit of carbon emitted leads to approximately the same increase in global temperature. In this proposed research, I aim to better constrain the range of possible values for the climate response to cumulative carbon dioxide emissions, in an effort to decrease the uncertainty associated with current estimates. In addition, I plan to extend estimates of the climate response to cumulative emissions to include emissions of other greenhouse gas and aerosols. Finally, I will develop a framework to estimate a range of projected climate impacts as a direct function of future cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. Improving our ability to measure the climate response to cumulative greenhouse gas emissions has the potential to advance our understanding of how human activities are affecting the climate system. The climate response to cumulative emissions represents a simple, yet powerful lens, through which to better predict both the magnitude and impacts of future global climate changes.