arXiv · 2604.08049
Quantifying Decarbonization Speed Across Climate Scenarios
Abstract
In this work, we analyze 126 publicly available IAM climate scenarios modeled by six leading teams in climate science. We define a simple numerical metric that measures the decarbonization speed implied by each IAM scenario. With this metric, the narrative based, high-dimensional time series scenario datasets can be ranked and compared in a transparent way. We find that the ranking of IAM scenarios according to the decarbonization speed is consistent with their representative concentration pathway assumptions, showing that the decarbonization metric is a useful summary of a scenario's mitigation policy. We further construct an empirical distribution and a fitted parametric distribution of the decarbonization speed estimates. Key statistics such as mean, median and their confidence intervals by the bootstrap resample technique are also reported.
Explore related subjects
Keep this discovery
Explore connections, maps & timelines
Fangyuan Zhang. 2026-04-09. Quantifying Decarbonization Speed Across Climate Scenarios. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.08049
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.