Climate Mitigation

Mitigation (of climate change) is a human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases. Mitigation also includes reduction of other factors that contribute directly or indirectly to climate change, such as short-lived climate forcers (methane, black carbon, sulfur dioxide, and similar).

We focus on understanding the trends and drivers of historical and future emissions, and how they affect the carbon cycle and climate system. We study recent trends in emissions and quantify the factors causing emission trends to change. We lead the emissions component of the Global Carbon Budget, and are also involved in the Global Methane Budget and Global N2O budget. More broadly we study the carbon cycle and climate system, with an emphasis of using simple models to help understand policy relevant processes. Our work on emissions also looks at methods of verification, whether through alternative data sources or observation-based methods. Key projects include the Global Carbon Budget, 4C, VERIFY, Coco₂, EYE-CLIMA, and Pathfinder.

We also study scenarios for future emissions in both the short-term (next few years), medium-term (up to 2030) and the long-term (up to 2100 and beyond). Important activities include the relationship between temperature and cumulative emissions (carbon budgets, zero emission commitment), the role of short-lived climate forcers in mitigation, and the opportunities and challenges of climate mitigation within the context of social, political, and technological constraints. We are particularly interested in how scenarios are generated and used, and alternative methods of communicating key insights from scenario analysis. Key projects include Paris Reinforce, IAM COMPACT, DIAMOND, ESM2025, and PROVIDE.

We place emphasis on clear presentation of findings and communicate our findings to a broader audience.