The Future of Climate Change

Abstract

The role of adaptation and mitigation to climate change is described using the concept of planetary boundaries. The future evolution of the main reservoirs of carbon is described. The role of the land and ocean sink, the permafrost feedback and ocean acidification is described. The challenge to keep Earth’s temperature below 1.5 °C or 2.0 ºC is discussed. As this will involve large amounts of negative emission technologies, such as carbon capture and storage, this may be hard to achieve, as an analysis of their potential and environmental costs shows. Geoengineering has a separate of difficult problems to cope with, which makes the application non-trivial. Decarbonization of societies is discussed and an outline given for a transition path towards a carbon-free society.