Understanding the Climate Crisis and the Requirements for its Solution
Abstract:
As the world strives to overcome the Corona crisis, a much larger crisis continues to build up slowly, but inexorably. Ever higher temperature records, larger heat waves, stronger tropical storms, more destructive wildfires and many other climatic extremes increase in frequency worldwide. Even the risk for the just experienced emergence of new pathogens increases due to climate change and ecosystem degradation. These observations are in full agreement with decades-old predictions and warnings by climate science. In this course we will review the scientific basis of anthropogenic climate change and the current state of knowledge, including examples from the latest scientific literature and research at the Institute of Environmental Physics in Heidelberg. We will focus in particular on the scientific requirements to stop global warming at a level that will prevent uncontrollable consequences. The implications of climate science for mitigation measures needed to reach the goals of the Paris climate agreement are severe, requiring a fast and complete decarbonization of the global energy system within the next decades. We will discuss studies and tools that explore the options for a sufficiently swift transition towards the goals of stabilization of the global climate and universal sustainability in the Anthropocene.