Consequences of twenty-first-century policy for multi-millennial climate and sea-level change
Peter U. Clark
(1)
,
Jeremy D. Shakun
(2)
,
Shaun A. Marcott
(3)
,
Alan C. Mix
(4)
,
Michael Eby
(5)
,
Scott Kulp
,
Anders Levermann
(6)
,
Glenn A. Milne
(7)
,
Patrik L. Pfister
(8)
,
Benjamin D. Santer
(9)
,
Daniel P. Schrag
,
Susan Solomon
,
Thomas F. Stocker
(10)
,
Benjamin H. Strauss
,
Andrew J. Weaver
,
Ricarda Winkelmann
,
David Archer
,
Edouard Bard
(11)
,
Aaron Goldner
,
Kurt Lambeck
(12)
,
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
(13)
,
Gian-Kasper Plattner
(14)
1
CEOAS -
College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences [Corvallis]
2 EEOS - Department of Environmental, Earth and Ocean Sciences [Boston]
3 University of Wisconsin-Madison
4 Laboratório de Neurobiologia II - IBCCF / UFRJ [Rio de Janeiro]
5 UVIC - University of Victoria [Canada]
6 PIK - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
7 University of Ottawa [Ottawa]
8 UNIBE - Universität Bern / University of Bern
9 LLNL - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
10 CEP - Climate and Environmental Physics [Bern]
11 Collège de France - Chaire Evolution du climat et de l'océan
12 RSES - Research School of Earth Sciences [ANU, Canberra]
13 Department of Geophysical Sciences [Chicago]
14 IGPP - Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics [Los Angeles]
2 EEOS - Department of Environmental, Earth and Ocean Sciences [Boston]
3 University of Wisconsin-Madison
4 Laboratório de Neurobiologia II - IBCCF / UFRJ [Rio de Janeiro]
5 UVIC - University of Victoria [Canada]
6 PIK - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
7 University of Ottawa [Ottawa]
8 UNIBE - Universität Bern / University of Bern
9 LLNL - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
10 CEP - Climate and Environmental Physics [Bern]
11 Collège de France - Chaire Evolution du climat et de l'océan
12 RSES - Research School of Earth Sciences [ANU, Canberra]
13 Department of Geophysical Sciences [Chicago]
14 IGPP - Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics [Los Angeles]
Scott Kulp
- Fonction : Auteur
Daniel P. Schrag
- Fonction : Auteur
Susan Solomon
- Fonction : Auteur
Benjamin H. Strauss
- Fonction : Auteur
Andrew J. Weaver
- Fonction : Auteur
Ricarda Winkelmann
- Fonction : Auteur
David Archer
- Fonction : Auteur
Edouard Bard
- Fonction : Auteur
- PersonId : 752223
- IdHAL : edouard-bard
- ORCID : 0000-0002-7237-8622
- IdRef : 031962807
Aaron Goldner
- Fonction : Auteur
Résumé
Most of the policy debate surrounding the actions needed to mitigate and adapt to anthropogenic climate change has been framed by observations of the past 150 years as well as climate and sea-level projections for the twenty-first century. The focus on this 250-year window, however, obscures some of the most profound problems associated with climate change. Here, we argue that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a period during which the overwhelming majority of human-caused carbon emissions are likely to occur, need to be placed into a long-term context that includes the past 20 millennia, when the last Ice Age ended and human civilization developed, and the next ten millennia, over which time the projected impacts of anthropogenic climate change will grow and persist. This long-term perspective illustrates that policy decisions made in the next few years to decades will have profound impacts on global climate, ecosystems and human societies - not just for this century, but for the next ten millennia and beyond.