Flowcharts of known – and unknown – climate interdependencies

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Here’s a note from Markus Wimmer about this Chatham House report:

Over the past years, I’ve looked at hundreds of research publications on climate risk, ESG, and energy, and few have left as lasting an impression as this one. This report from Chatham House is clearly in my all-time Top 5. Why?

The report contains a series of expertly designed flow charts that brilliantly highlight the known & unknown inter-dependencies and feedback loops of extreme weather caused by our emissions.

Example: If you want to understand how, for example, a drought in Syria – classified by #NASA as an event that occurs only every 900 years – contributed significantly to Brexit, these flowcharts provide fascinating insights.

Take-aways:

➢ Suppose policy ambition, low-carbon technology deployment and investment follow current trends. In that case, 2.7°C of warming by the end of this century is likely, and a plausible worst case of 3.5°C is possible (10% chance).

➢ Any relapse or stasis in emissions reduction policies could lead to a plausible worst case of 7°C of warming by the end of the century (10% chance).

➢ If emissions follow the current trajectory, there is less than a 1 percent chance of reaching the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target.

➢ If emissions do not come down drastically before 2030, then by 2040, some 3.9 billion people will likely experience significant heatwaves, 12 times more than the historical average.

➢ By the 2030s, the number of people on the planet exposed to heat stress exceeding the survivability threshold is likely to surpass 10 million a year.