Implications of Climate Science for Negotiators
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PART I the Challenge
PART I The Challenge 2 Implications of climate science for negotiators Thomas F. Stocker Physics Institute, University of Bern The scientific assessments carried out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have delivered robust and rigorous scientific information for the complex negotiations that should produce a binding agreement to limit climate change and its impacts and risks. Understanding climate change as a threat to key resources for the livelihood of humans and the functioning of ecosystems provides a more appropriate perspective on the scale of the problem. Model simulations suggest that many options exist today to limit climate change. However, these options are rapidly vanishing under continued carbon emissions: Temperature targets must be revised upwards by about 0.4°C per decade for constant mitigation ambitions. Mitigating climate change has the important benefit of creating favourable conditions to reach many of the Sustainable Development Goals; business-as-usual and consequent unchecked climate change will make these important universal goals unreachable. 1 Introduction “Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time” – this is the assertion of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC 2009). The Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC (AR5), which was completed in November 2014 with the publication of the Synthesis Report (IPCC 2014c), gives a comprehensive snapshot of the knowledge science has to offer to quantify, understand, and confront this problem. The four key messages from the “Summary for Policymakers” of the Synthesis Report are: 31 Towards a Workable and Effective Climate Regime 1. Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. -
Bio of Thomas Stoc Thomas Stocker
Bio of Thomas Stocker, University of Bern, Switzerland Thomas Stocker was born in Zürich and obtained a PhD in Natural Sciences of ETH Zürich in 1987. He held research positions at University College London, McGill University (Montreal), Columbia University (New York) and University of Hawai'i (Honolulu). Since 1993 he is Professor of Climate and Environmental Physics at the University of Bern. His research encompasses the development of climate models of intermediate complexity, modelling past and future climate change, in particular abrupt climate change and its effects on the ocean, and the reconstruction of greenhouse gas concentrations based on ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. This has resulted in the definitive CO2 and CH4 records of the past 800,000 years, still a world record. Thomas Stocker has authored or co-authored more than 220 peer-reviewed papers in the area of climate dynamics and paleoclimate modeling and reconstruction. After more than 10 years of service in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) he was elected Co-Chair of Working Group I of the IPCC for the period 2008 to 2015. The comprehensive assessment report Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis was approved by the governments on September 27, 2013. This report provides the scientific foundation of the Paris Agreement. Thomas Stocker was awarded a Dr. Honoris Causa of the University of Versailles in 2006 and of ETH Zürich in 2016. He received the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union in 2009. Thomas Stocker is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, a Foreign Member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Association of Arts and Sciences and a Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. -
Curriculum Vitae Prof. Dr. Thomas Stocker
Curriculum Vitae Prof. Dr. Thomas Stocker Name: Thomas Stocker Geboren: 01. Juli 1959 Forschungsschwerpunkte: Klimadynamik, Paläoklima, Klimamodellierung, Eiskernforschung, Klimaprojektion Thomas Stocker ist Geowissenschaftler. Er entwickelt Klimamodelle zur Simulation von Klimaänderungen über die letzten 2 Millionen Jahre sowie zur Projektion künftiger Klimaveränderungen. Außerdem befasst er sich mit der Rekonstruktion vergangener Klimaänderungen mithilfe von Eisbohrkernen und der Dynamik des Erdsystems. Akademischer und beruflicher Werdegang seit 1993 Professor, Physikalisches Institut und Abteilungsleiter, Klima- und Umweltphysik, Universität Bern, Schweiz 1991 - 1993 Associate Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, New York, USA 1989 - 1991 Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Meteorology, McGill University, Montreal, Kanada 1988 - 1989 SERC Gastforscher, Department of Mathematics, University College London, UK 1988 Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau, Hydrologie und Glaziologie, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Schweiz 1987 Promotion zum Dr. sc. nat., Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Schweiz 1984 Diplom, Naturwissenschaften (Umweltphysik), Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Schweiz Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina www.leopoldina.org 1 1978 - 1984 Studium der Umweltphysik, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Schweiz Funktionen in wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaften und Gremien 2018 -