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Peak Shaving with Solar Radiation Management Would Shorten Global Temperature Overshoot
  • Linus Boselius,
  • Alistair Duffey,
  • Peter James Irvine
Linus Boselius
University College London
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Alistair Duffey
University College London

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Peter James Irvine
University College London
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Abstract

Projected rates of emissions reductions are unlikely to keep global temperatures from crossing the Paris Agreement temperature targets. Large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) could help recover a target temperature after it has been exceeded, producing an overshoot scenario. Solar radiation management (SRM) is the proposal to cool the planet by increasing the reflection of incoming solar radiation. It could be used in an overshoot scenario for peak shaving, where SRM is deployed to maintain a temperature target during the overshoot. Here, we quantify the effect of peak shaving on the duration of the overshoot using an adapted extension of the SSP2-4.5 scenario and an ensemble of variants of the FaIR simple climate model. We find a substantial reduction in overshoot duration, which ranges from ∼5% for decadal overshoots up to ∼20% for multi-century overshoots. The shortening is predominantly driven by the ocean response to peak shaving. Peak shaving results in lower ocean temperatures relative to the overshoot scenario, inducing a stronger surface temperature response to decreasing and negative emissions, driving overshoot shortening. Our results also indicate that peak shaving with SRM would reduce the cumulative net negative emissions needed to end temperature overshoot by ∼27%. Thus, SRM, when deployed as a complement to emissions reductions and CDR, could end overshoot decades earlier than otherwise and at a substantially lower cost.
01 Aug 2024Submitted to ESS Open Archive
01 Aug 2024Published in ESS Open Archive