Introduction to the Lecture

The presentation will first summarize the global carbon cycle and the importance of the ongoing anthropogenic perturbation, via the emissions of CO₂ from fossil fuels burning (oil, gas, coal) and from land use change (e.g. deforestation), as well as the response of the natural carbon cycle, the continental and oceanic carbon sinks, their spatiotemporal dynamics and vulnerability to climate change. The presentation will highlight our current understanding of the global carbon budget as well as remaining sources of potential biases and uncertainties. Then, the presentation will focus on the quantification of the “remaining carbon budget”, that is the amount of CO₂ humanity can still emit in order to be compatible with the ambitions of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5°C or 2°C. I will first describe the physical and biogeochemical processes underlying the concept of the remaining carbon budget before addressing the implications for emissions mitigation, as assessed by the IPCC and central to the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP).

Profile of the Speaker

Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, fellow of the Royal Society, hold a Chair in Mathematical Modelling of the Climate System at the University of Exeter, UK and is also Research Director at the Laboratoire de Météorologie dynamique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France. Professor Friedlingstein has more than 30 years research experience in the field of global carbon cycle modelling, global biogeochemical cycles and global climate change. He published 260 peer-reviewed articles including 69 in high profile journals (Nature publishing, Science, PNAS), H-index of 107, more than 58,000 citations (Web of Science, Mar. 2024). Professor Friedlingstein received several awards, including the Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky Medal of the European Geosciences Union in 2020 and the Alexander von Humbold Research award in 2019. He was ranked 3rd in the Reuters list of the world’s top climate scientists in 2021 and has been a Thompson Reuters highly cited researcher every year since 2014. Friedlingstein is an international leader in the understanding of the global carbon cycle and more specifically, the feedbacks between the carbon cycle and the climate system. Over the last decade, he took a leading role on several international activities, in particular the leadership of the Global Carbon Budget. He is member of the Joint Science Committee of the World Climate Research Programme and has been a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR4 and AR5.