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IPCC Reasons for Concern Regarding Climate Change Risks Brian C REVIEW ARTICLE PUBLISHED ONLINE: 4 JANUARY 2017 | DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE3179 IPCC reasons for concern regarding climate change risks Brian C. O’Neill1*, Michael Oppenheimer2, Rachel Warren3, Stephane Hallegatte4, Robert E. Kopp5, Hans O. Pörtner6, Robert Scholes7, Joern Birkmann8, Wendy Foden9, Rachel Licker2, Katharine J. Mach10, Phillippe Marbaix11, Michael D. Mastrandrea10, Jeff Price3, Kiyoshi Takahashi12, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele11 and Gary Yohe13 The reasons for concern framework communicates scientific understanding about risks in relation to varying levels of climate change. The framework, now a cornerstone of the IPCC assessments, aggregates global risks into five categories as a function of global mean temperature change. We review the framework’s conceptual basis and the risk judgments made in the most recent IPCC report, confirming those judgments in most cases in the light of more recent literature and identifying their limitations. We point to extensions of the framework that offer complementary climate change metrics to global mean temperature change and better account for possible changes in social and ecological system vulnerability. Further research should systematically evaluate risks under alternative scenarios of future climatic and societal conditions. he reasons for concern (RFC) framework was developed in risk. Perhaps most importantly, we consider improvements in the the IPCC Third Assessment Report (AR3) to inform discus- framework, particularly emphasizing the dynamic nature of expo- Tsions relevant to implementation of Article 2 of the United sure and vulnerability, two key components of risk not sufficiently Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). covered in the current approach. Article 2 presents the Convention’s long-term objective of avoiding “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”. The Reasons for concern RFC framework and the associated Burning Embers diagram illus- Risk judgments for each RFC are based on the key risk criteria trating authors’ risk judgments have since been widely discussed (Box 1) but the relative importance of each varies across RFCs and used to inform policy decisions. For example, they informed depending on the quality and quantity of information available a recent dialog between Parties to the UNFCCC and experts1,2 on in the literature. It is also not possible to rely on a single quantita- the adequacy of the long-term goal of avoiding a warming of 2 °C tive metric of risk for a given RFC since each one aggregates over a relative to pre-industrial temperatures, contributing to a strength- number of different risks. An enhanced Burning Embers diagram ening of that goal in the recent Paris Agreement3. Elaborations of (Fig. 1) summarizes the evidence, indicating both individual risks the Burning Embers diagram have been used to represent climate that play important roles in identifying particular risk transitions, as impacts and risks at the regional level4 and for specific systems (for well as overarching key risks relevant in broader terms to each RFC example, ocean systems5). (Table 1). These overarching key risk categories were developed This Review summarizes the conceptual basis for the RFCs in AR56 from risks identified as being of high concern by chapter (Box 1) and offers an explanation of the reasoning behind associ- authors from across IPCC Working Group (WG) II (Supplementary ated risk judgments that is complementary to, but goes beyond, the Section 1). Unless otherwise specified, we refer to GMT relative to treatment in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report6 (AR5). We focus pre-industrial temperatures (1850–1900). Note that conversions explicitly on the evidence base for transitions from one risk level to from units used in AR5 can give the appearance of overly precise the next, incorporate post-AR5 literature in those discussions, and temperature levels (Supplementary Section 2). offer thoughts about limitations of the subjective judgments behind each RFC. We also improve the synthesis of RFC-related material RFC1: Risks to unique and threatened systems. Unique and across AR5, and in turn provide both a clearer connection to evi- threatened systems encompass ecological and human systems dence from AR5 that supports the RFC judgments, as well as a com- that (i) have restricted geographic ranges constrained by climate- parison of the RFCs to similar approaches employing metrics other related conditions and (ii) have high endemism or other dis- than global mean temperature change (GMT) for characterizing tinctive properties. Many of these systems also face exceptional 1National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA. 2Department of Geosciences and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA. 3Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK. 4Climate Change Group, World Bank, Washington DC 20433, USA. 5Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers Energy Institute and Institute of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901, USA. 6Marine Biology/Ecological and Evolutionary Physiology, Alfred-Wegener-Institute, Bremerhaven D-27570, Germany. 7University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2050, South Africa. 8Institute of Spatial and Regional Planning, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart 70569, Germany. 9Department of Botany and Zoology, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa. 10Carnegie Institution for Science, Department of Global Ecology, Stanford, California 94305, USA. 11Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve B-1348, Belgium. 12National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba 305-8506, Japan. 13Department of Economics, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut 06459, USA. *e-mail: [email protected] 28 NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE | VOL 7 | JANUARY 2017 | www.nature.com/natureclimatechange ©2017 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. ©2017 Mac millan Publishers Li mited, part of Spri nger Nature. All ri ghts reserved. NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE3179 REVIEW ARTICLE Box 1 | Conceptual basis. The reasons for concern (RFCs) reported in AR5 are: identification of key risks. Key risks reflect potentially severe adverse consequences for socio-ecological systems that could be • Risks to unique and threatened systems (indicated by RFC1) used to inform the interpretation of “dangerous” in the UNFCCC • Risks associated with extreme weather events (RFC2) Article 2 objective. Criteria for identifying key risks include6,102,103: • Risks associated with the distribution of impacts (RFC3) high probability of significant risk materializing, taking into account • Risks associated with global aggregate impacts (RFC4) its timing; large magnitude of associated consequences, taking into • Risks associated with large-scale singular events (RFC5) account the importance of affected systems; persistent vulnerability or exposure contributing to risks, or the irreversibility, at least on Types of risk included in each category are discussed in the sec- human timescales, of associated impacts; and limited potential to tion on reasons for concern. The categories share an emphasis on reduce risks through adaptation or mitigation. going beyond changes in biophysical systems to possible conse- AR5 authors drew on these criteria to characterize climate-related quences for society and ecosystems, including their interdepend- risk for each RFC as a function of GMT as Undetectable, Moderate, encies (henceforth ‘socio-ecological systems’). Risk is the potential High, or Very High. The transition from Undetectable to Moderate for negative consequences, whereas impacts are the manifestation is defined by the GMT at which there is at least medium confidence of that potential97,98. Climate-related risk depends on the probability that impacts associated with a given RFC are both detectable and of hazardous events or trends and on the consequences manifested attributable to climate change (based on the analysis in ref. 9, sec- when a physical, climate-related hazard interacts with the expo- tion 18.6.4), while also accounting for the magnitude of the risk and sure and vulnerability of society and ecosystems. Hazards related the other criteria noted above. The transition from Moderate to High to climate change include altered occurrence of extreme events, risk is assigned to the GMT at which associated impacts become trends in precipitation or temperature, sea-level rise, and oceanic severe and widespread. The transition from High to Very High is changes such as acidification, deoxygenation or circulation changes. set at the GMT at which risk is high according to all criteria and in Exposure is the presence of people, ecosystems, or assets in places particular the ability to adapt is limited. In each case, variations in and settings that could be adversely affected, and vulnerability is regional climate outcomes for a given GMT are accounted for and their susceptibility and predisposition to harm99,100. These defini- the likelihood of the associated hazardous event or trend is judged. tions follow those laid out in AR5, although alternatives can be Defining the risk levels this way enables integration within each found in the literature101. RFC across different but related risks and many different types of The process of making judgments about
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