PROVIDE: Paris Agreement Overshooting – Reversibility, Climate Impacts and Adaptation Needs

Overshooting the Paris Agreement 1.5°C temperature thresholds is a distinct possibility, but what does such temperature overshoots imply for the planning and design of adaptation action? The PROVIDE project will deliver information on overshoot scenarios and expected impacts and their reversibility, covering both sectors and geographical regions. The information will directly feed into adaptation action. 

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Project details

Start and end date
1.9.2021 - 31.8.2024 (project has ended)
Financing
EU Horizon 2020

The 1.5°C Paris Agreement temperature goal provides the benchmark for global climate action to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change. However, under current trajectories, overshooting (meaning the temporary exceedance of 1.5°C) the Paris temperature thresholds is a distinct possibility. The impacts of such overshoots is global, but have particular consequences for vulnerable regions and systems.  Here, even in the case of only a temporary exceedance of 1.5°C, thresholds of abrupt and possibly irreversible shifts or adaptation limits may be exceeded. 

The PROVIDE project will provide climate services and support decision-making. The project will assess risks of high-end global warming for sectoral impacts and potential irreversible impacts of overshoots including for sea level rise, permafrost loss, glacier loss and terrestrial and marine species. 

PROVIDE will: 

  • Produce global multi-scenario, multi-sectoral climate information 

  • Co-develop a generalisable Overshoot Proofing Methodology 

  • Identify and prioritise adaptation needs in four Iconic Regions 

  • Integrate all project outcomes into a Climate Service Dashboard 

The PROVIDE Climate Services Dashboard will be an online platform providing detailed information on overshoot scenarios and expected impacts and their reversibility, with unique sectoral coverage including extreme events, biodiversity, cryosphere, sea level rise, agriculture, economic damages, socio-economic vulnerabilities among others. The information includes global, national and city level modelling results. The design and the presentation of the data will be co-developed together with stakeholders. 

The project focus on case studies from four iconic regions: 
 
1) Arctic Fennoscandia, with focus on Bodø, Nordland County, Norway 
2) Iberian Mediterranean, with focus on the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, Portugal  

3) Indus Basin, with focus on Islamabad, Pakistan  

4) The Bahamas, with a focus on Nassau, The Bahamas  

These case-studies provide entry-points and can support awareness-raising, inform decision making and enhance overshoot sensitive adaptation action. 

CICERO is co-leading the work on overshoot proofing for enhanced adaptation decision making and policy. CICERO provides estimates of macroeconomic impacts for different overshoot scenarios and adaptive capacities with particular attention to sectoral interdependencies. CICERO will deliver data and publications describing uncertainties and risks in the deployment and maintenance of Solar Radiation Management (SRM) in overshoot scenarios. We will develop an SRM emulator framework and risk framing tools to assess and quantify the global and regional uncertainties in temperature and precipitation response to stratospheric aerosol injection as a tool for SRM. CICERO collaborates with other consortium members on the implementations of SRM to assess the risk of SRM deployment failure in the project dashboard. 

 
The project is coordinated by the   
Humboldt University Berlin 

Partners: 

Climate Analytics 
VITO 
BUUR part of Sweco 
CICERO 
CEA-LSCE 
FCiências.ID 
Weather and Climate Services 
ETH Zürich 
Universität Bern 
Imperial College London 
Universität Innsbruck 
University of East Anglia 
ARTTIC Innovation 
Nordland Research Institute 
University of British Columbia 
Universität Hamburg