Moderate global warming does not rule out extreme global climate outcomes

Abstract

Abstract Effectively communicating worst-case projections of global future climate—hereinafter referred to as worst-case climate outcomes—is essential for risk assessment and developing robust adaptation strategies to global warming 1–7 . Yet, current approaches for identifying spatially consistent climate outcomes are limited, with worst-case global climates typically communicated via the average of climate model projections at high global warming levels, such as 3 °C or 4 °C above the preindustrial era 8,9 . Here we show that extreme global climate outcomes may occur even under moderate 2 °C warming for several sectors. For droughts in global key breadbasket regions, precipitation extremes over highly populated areas and fire weather extremes across forests, global climatic impact-drivers at 2 °C of global warming may turn out to be much more extreme than model-averaged projections at 3 °C or 4 °C warming. We derive these results by identifying sector-specific, spatially consistent potential high- and low-impact global climate outcomes through spatially averaging projected sector-relevant climatic impact-drivers across key global regions. Our approach can easily be adapted to a wide range of sectors to support the improvement of sector-specific climate risk assessment and to inform climate policy. As global warming approaches 1.5 °C (ref. 10 ), these findings underscore the urgency of rapid mitigation to limit warming well below 2 °C, as even a 2 °C world may entail severe impacts.