Reducing the risk of a collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation: A comment
Authors
Hans-Martin Füssel
Stanford University and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Keywords:
climate change, integrated assessment, risk analysis, DICE model
Abstract
Yohe et al. (2006) use a collection of reduced-form models to estimate the likelihood of a collapse of the thermohaline ocean circulation (THC) under different levels and timings of climate mitigation policy considering four sources of uncertainty in the climate system. The representation of uncertainty about future global mean temperature change in this study assumes a deterministic relationship between climate sensitivity and a model parameter related to ocean heat uptake. This assumption leads to an underestimation of the uncertainty and magnitude of transient climate change. As a result, both the importance of climate sensitivity compared to other uncertain model parameters and the likelihood of a THC breakdown are significantly underestimated in this study.
Author Biography
Hans-Martin Füssel, Stanford University and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Center for Environmental Science and Policy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, U.S.A
and
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany
