Figure 1.
CO2 annual emissions from fossil fuel use and cement manufacture, based on data of British Petroleum [4] concatenated with data of Boden et al. [5].
(A) is log scale and (B) is linear.
Figure 2.
Fossil fuel CO2 emissions and carbon content (1 ppm atmospheric CO2 ∼ 2.12 GtC).
Estimates of reserves (profitable to extract at current prices) and resources (potentially recoverable with advanced technology and/or at higher prices) are the mean of estimates of Energy Information Administration (EIA) [7], German Advisory Council (GAC) [8], and Global Energy Assessment (GEA) [9]. GEA [9] suggests the possibility of >15,000 GtC unconventional gas. Error estimates (vertical lines) are from GEA and probably underestimate the total uncertainty. We convert energy content to carbon content using emission factors of Table 4.2 of [15] for coal, gas and conventional oil, and, also following [15], emission factor of unconventional oil is approximated as being the same as for coal. Total emissions through 2012, including gas flaring and cement manufacture, are 384 GtC; fossil fuel emissions alone are ∼370 GtC.
Figure 3.
Global surface temperature relative to 1880–1920 mean.
B shows the 5 and 11 year means. Figures are updates of [16] using data through August 2013.
Figure 4.
Decay of atmospheric CO2 perturbations.
(A) Instantaneous injection or extraction of CO2 with initial conditions at equilibrium. (B) Fossil fuel emissions terminate at the end of 2015, 2030, or 2050 and land use emissions terminate after 2015 in all three cases, i.e., thereafter there is no net deforestation.
Figure 5.
Atmospheric CO2 if fossil fuel emissions reduced.
(A) 6% or 2% annual cut begins in 2013 and 100 GtC reforestation drawdown occurs in 2031–2080, (B) effect of delaying onset of emission reduction.
Figure 6.
Annual increase of CO2 based on data from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory [188].
Prior to 1981 the CO2 change is based on only Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Temperature changes in lower diagram are 12-month running means for the globe and Niño3.4 area [16].
Figure 7.
Solar irradiance and sunspot number in the era of satellite data (see text).
Left scale is the energy passing through an area perpendicular to Sun-Earth line. Averaged over Earth’s surface the absorbed solar energy is ∼240 W/m2, so the full amplitude of measured solar variability is ∼0.25 W/m2.
Figure 8.
Climate forcings employed in our six main scenarios.
Forcings through 2010 are as in [64].
Figure 9.
Simulated global temperature relative to 1880–1920 mean for CO2 scenarios of Figure 5.
Figure 10.
Annual Greenland and West Antarctic ice mass changes as estimated via alternative methods.
Data were read from Figure 4 of Shepherd et al. [23] and averaged over the available records.
Figure 11.
(A) 2012 emissions by source region, and (B) cumulative 1751–2012 emissions. Results are an update of Fig. 10 of [190] using data from [5].
Figure 12.
Per capita fossil fuel CO2 emissions.
Countries, regions and data sources are the same as in Fig. 11. Horizontal lines are the global mean and multiples of the global mean.
Figure 13.
United States energy consumption [229].
Figure 14.
World energy consumption for indicated fuels, which excludes wood [4].