An Earth System Model Ensemble Forced With Probabilistic Emissions: Demonstration and Prospects for Climate Risk Assessment

Abstract Future projections of climate change are uncertain, in part because of uncertainty in future greenhouse gas emissions. However, current widely used emission scenarios and related physical climate projections have no probabilities associated with them, presenting a challenge for risk‐informed climate adaptation decision making. Motivated to close this gap, we demonstrate an ensemble of full‐complexity Earth System Model‐based climate projections that include explicit estimates of emissions uncertainty. This approach avoids the need to condition future Earth System Model projections on storyline‐based climate scenarios and provides information that can be probabilistically interpreted directly for arbitrary climate metrics including regional climate impact drivers. This addresses a key need of climate risk assessment for climate adaptation. Our demonstration is intended to motivate further engagement on development and delivery of probabilistic climate information, that complements information from scenario‐based climate projections.