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. 2023 Nov 9;14(1):7257.
doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-42891-2.

Aerosols overtake greenhouse gases causing a warmer climate and more weather extremes toward carbon neutrality

Pinya Wang  1 , Yang Yang  2 , Daokai Xue  3 , Lili Ren  4 , Jianping Tang  3 , L Ruby Leung  5 , Hong Liao  1
Affiliations

Aerosols overtake greenhouse gases causing a warmer climate and more weather extremes toward carbon neutrality

Pinya Wang et al. Nat Commun. .

Abstract

To mitigate climate warming, many countries have committed to achieve carbon neutrality in the mid-21st century. Here, we assess the global impacts of changing greenhouse gases (GHGs), aerosols, and tropospheric ozone (O3) following a carbon neutrality pathway on climate and extreme weather events individually using the Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1). The results suggest that the future aerosol reductions significantly contribute to climate warming and increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weathers toward carbon neutrality and aerosol impacts far outweigh those of GHGs and tropospheric O3. It reverses the knowledge that the changing GHGs dominate the future climate changes as predicted in the middle of the road pathway. Therefore, substantial reductions in GHGs and tropospheric O3 are necessary to reach the 1.5 °C warming target and mitigate the harmful effects of concomitant aerosol reductions on climate and extreme weather events under carbon neutrality in the future.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Changes in annual mean surface air temperature.
Spatial distributions of changes in annual mean surface air temperature (°C) in GHG2050 (a), AerGHG2050 (b), ALL2050 (c), and ALL2100 (d), relative to Baseline (2020) and regional mean surface temperature changes in 2050 attributed to greenhouse gases (GHGs), aerosols, and tropospheric ozone (O3) changes over 21 subregions (e) defined in Fig. S5. The stippled areas indicate statistical significance with 95% confidence from a two-tailed Student’s t-test.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Changes in annual mean precipitation.
Spatial distributions of changes in annual mean precipitation (mm/day) in GHG2050 (a), AerGHG2050 (b), ALL2050 (c), and ALL2100 (d), relative to Baseline (2020) and regional mean surface temperature changes in 2050 attributed to greenhouse gases (GHGs), aerosols, and tropospheric ozone (O3) changes over 21 subregions (e) defined in Fig. S5.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3. Global maps of heat wave indices.
Heat wave days (days/year), mean duration (days/event) and amplitude (°C/day) in GHG2050 (a, e, i), AerGHG2050 (b, f, j), ALL2050 (c, g, k), and ALL2100 (d, h, l) simulations.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4. Global maps of extreme precipitation indices.
Changes in annual total precipitation on wet days (mm), maximum consecutive days (days) and heavy precipitation days (R10mm, days) in GHG2050 (a, e, i), AerGHG2050 (b, f, j), ALL2050 (c, g, k) and ALL2100 (d, h, l), relative to Baseline (2020).
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