Project description
Understanding the impact of CO2 removal
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it in various forms, including geological formations, oceans, and land-based sinks, can help limit global warming and reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. However, these methods also carry potential risks and uncertainties. The EU-funded RESCUE project will improve our understanding of the impact of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods on the Earth system’s response to climate neutrality and net negative emissions. Specifically, it will quantify the Earth system and climate responses to pathways achieving climate neutrality through CDR deployment. RESCUE will develop new global temperature stabilisation scenarios that consider various aspects of the Earth system response and the reversibility of induced changes.
Objective
The RESCUE project will improve knowledge and understanding in area c) of this call: “Climate and Earth System responses to climate neutrality and net negative emissions”, by pursuing two overall objectives: 1) Quantify the climate and Earth system responses to pathways achieving climate neutrality by Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) deployment with and without temperature overshoot, and 2) Assess the potential role of CDR in reducing net GHG emissions, as well as its potential environmental risks and co-benefits.
RESCUE will expand existing knowledge on CDR methods, to design a suite of new global temperature stabilization scenarios at several target values to achieve the first objective. New model developments will deliver improved climate projections with explicit representation of CDR portfolios for these scenarios. The analyses will be devoted to finding suitable pathways to climate neutrality considering multiple aspects of the Earth system response: mean climate and extremes, sea-level rise, global carbon cycling, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Particular attention will be paid to the reversibility of induced changes by comparing scenarios with and without temperature overshoot. The second objective will be achieved by analyses assessing various factors determining overall effectiveness, impacts and co-benefits of CDR portfolios. These factors include CDR-specific CO2 uptake, CDR-induced biogeophysical climate feedbacks, CDR-derived non-CO2 radiative forcers, and the interaction between socio-economic and environmental impacts (e.g. biodiversity). Moreover, a dedicated analysis will provide key criteria for developing a monitoring system for the effectiveness of CDR portfolio deployments and their potential side effects. Stakeholders will be closely engaged throughout the project to ensure policy relevance and final update of the results which will be made freely available via existing climate services.
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HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
08034 Barcelona
Spain