Nadine Mengis

Nadine Mengis
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel · Division of Biogeochemical Modelling

Dr. rer. nat.

About

80
Publications
15,668
Reads
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1,064
Citations
Introduction
I am an Independent Junior Research Group Leader at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. My project ‘FOOTPRINTS - From carbon removal to achieving the Paris Agreement’s goal: temperature stabilisation’ aims to investigate the Earth systems response to net-zero CO2 pathways. Previously, I worked on the remaining carbon budget, and the assessment of national net-zero solutions, with a focus on carbon dioxide removal measures and accurate carbon accounting.
Additional affiliations
August 2019 - September 2021
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
Position
  • Researcher
Description
  • PostDoctoral researcher in the Net-Zero-2050 cluster of the Helmholtz Climate Initiative
March 2019 - August 2019
Simon Fraser University
Position
  • PostDoc Position
January 2013 - July 2013
GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
Position
  • Master's Student
Education
October 2010 - July 2013
Kiel University
Field of study
  • Climate Physics - Meteorology and Oceanography
October 2007 - June 2010
Kiel University
Field of study
  • Physics of the Earth System - Meteorology, Oceanography, Geophysics

Publications

Publications (80)
Article
Full-text available
The Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2°C requires drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and the balancing of any remaining emissions by carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Due to uncertainties about the potential and durability of many land-based approaches to deliver sufficient CDR, marine CDR options are receiving more and...
Article
Full-text available
While international climate policies now focus on limiting global warming to well below 2 °C or pursuing a 1.5 °C level of global warming, the climate modelling community has not provided an experimental design in which all Earth system models (ESMs) converge and stabilize at the same prescribed global warming levels. This gap hampers accurate esti...
Article
Full-text available
Previous phases of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) have primarily focused on simulations driven by atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs), for both idealized model experiments and climate projections of different emissions scenarios. We argue that although this approach was practical to allow parallel development of...
Article
Full-text available
With the amendment to the German Climate Change Act in 2021, the Federal Government of Germany has set the target to become greenhouse gas neutral by 2045. Reaching this ambitious target requires multisectoral efforts, which in turn calls for interdisciplinary collaboration: the Net-Zero-2050 project of the Helmholtz Climate Initiative serves as an...
Preprint
Full-text available
The proportionality between global mean temperature and cumulative emissions of CO2 predicted in Earth System Models (ESMs) is the foundation of carbon budgeting frameworks. Deviations from this behavior could impact estimates of required net zero timings and negative emissions requirements to meet the Paris Agreement climate targets. However, exis...
Article
Full-text available
Different human activities and associated emissions of CO2 and non-CO2 radiative forcing agents and feedbacks determine the final state of Earth’s climate. To understand and explain contributions to global temperature changes, many emission-based metrics have been employed, such as CO2-equivalent or -forcing equivalent. None of these metrics, howev...
Preprint
Marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) and geological carbon storage in the marine environment (mCS) promise to contribute to the mitigation of global climate change in combination with drastic emission reductions. However, the implementable potential of mCDR and mCS depends, apart from technology readiness, also on site-specific conditions. In this...
Article
Full-text available
To reach their net‐zero targets, countries will have to compensate hard‐to‐abate CO2 emissions through carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Yet, current assessments rarely include socio‐cultural or institutional aspects or fail to contextualize CDR options for implementation. Here we present a context‐specific feasibility assessment of CDR options for the...
Preprint
Full-text available
While international climate policies now focus on limiting global warming well below 2 °C, or pursuing 1.5 °C, the climate modeling community has not provided an experimental design in which all Earth System Models (ESMs) converge and stabilize at the same prescribed global warming levels. This gap hampers accurate estimations based on comprehensiv...
Article
Full-text available
Non-technical summary Scenarios compatible with the Paris agreement's temperature goal of 1.5 °C involve carbon dioxide removal measures – measures that actively remove CO 2 from the atmosphere – on a massive scale. Such large-scale implementations raise significant ethical problems. Van Vuuren et al. (2018), as well as the current IPCC scenarios,...
Preprint
To reach their net-zero targets, countries will have to compensate hard-to-abate CO emissions through carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Yet, current assessments rarely include socio-cultural or institutional aspects or fail to contextualize CDR options for implementation. Here we present a context-specific feasibility assessment of CDR options for the...
Article
Full-text available
The latest IPCC assessment report highlights once more the need for negative emissions via carbon dioxide removal (CDR) measures to reach ambitious mitigation goals. In particular ecosystem-based CDR measures are currently the focus of national net-zero strategies and novel carbon crediting efforts. Blue carbon dioxide removal (blueCDR) options are...
Article
Full-text available
Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) biogeochemical dynamics are crucial for the regulation of the terrestrial carbon cycle. In Earth system models (ESMs) the implementation of nutrient limitations has been shown to improve the carbon cycle feedback representation and, hence, the fidelity of the response of land to simulated atmospheric CO2 rise. Here w...
Article
Full-text available
Limiting global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C, as agreed in the 2015 Paris Agreement, requires global carbon neutrality by mid-century at the latest. The corresponding carbon budget is decreasing steadily and significantly. To phase out carbon emissions in line with the specified temperature target, countries a...
Chapter
In this chapter different Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) methods are described. Based on the most recent literature, their respective tech-readiness, potential, cost and side-effects and discussed. The meth- ods are distinct by their carbon uptake methodology, either through chemical or biological processes, as well as by the choice of storage locati...
Article
Full-text available
The Zero Emissions Commitment (ZEC) is the expected temperature change following the cessation of anthropogenic emissions of climate altering gases and aerosols. Recent model intercomparison work has suggested that global average ZEC for CO2 is close to zero. However there has thus far been no effort to explore how temperature is expected to change...
Preprint
Full-text available
Nitrogen and phosphorus biogeochemical dynamics are crucial for the regulation of the terrestrial carbon cycle. In Earth System Models (ESMs) the implementation of nutrient limitations has been shown to improve the carbon cycle feedback representation and hence, improve the fidelity of the response of land to simulated atmospheric CO2 rise. Here we...
Article
Full-text available
With increasing pressure for climate action, commitments to setting scientifically supported emissions targets have become more common among firms. The target‐setting methods currently endorsed by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) use emission pathways that are aligned with 1.5°C and well‐below 2°C long‐term temperature goals to inform ne...
Article
Full-text available
Removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be required over the next decades to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C aiming at not exceeding 1.5°C. Technological and ecosystem-based options are considered for generating negative emissions through carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and several nations have...
Article
Full-text available
Plain Language Summary Here a net‐zero‐2050 Germany is envisioned by combining analysis from an energy‐system model with insights into approaches that allow for a higher carbon circularity in the German system, and first results from assessments of national carbon dioxide removal potentials. A back‐casting perspective is applied on how net‐zero Ger...
Article
Full-text available
Non-technical summary We summarize some of the past year's most important findings within climate change-related research. New research has improved our understanding about the remaining options to achieve the Paris Agreement goals, through overcoming political barriers to carbon pricing, taking into account non-CO 2 factors, a well-designed implem...
Article
Full-text available
Greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution have changed the composition of the atmosphere, and thereby initiated global warming and reduced air quality. Our editorial board members note the need for a deeper understanding of atmospheric fluxes and processes to tackle climate and human health issues. Greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution have c...
Article
Full-text available
As the technical and political challenges of land-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches become more apparent, the oceans may be the new “blue” frontier for carbon drawdown strategies in climate governance. Drawing on lessons learnt from the way terrestrial carbon dioxide removal emerged, we explore increasing overall attention to marine env...
Article
Full-text available
The remaining carbon budget quantifies the future CO 2 emissions to limit global warming below a desired level. Carbon budgets are subject to uncertainty in the Transient Climate Response to Cumulative CO 2 Emissions (TCRE), as well as to non-CO 2 climate influences. Here we estimate the TCRE using observational constraints, and integrate the geoph...
Article
Full-text available
The impact of calcifying phytoplankton on atmospheric CO2 concentration is determined by a number of factors, including their degree of ecological success as well as the buffering capacity of the ocean/marine sediment system. The relative importance of these factors has changed over Earth's history and this has implications for atmospheric CO2 and...
Article
Full-text available
The energy system transformation in Germany is a challenge for society, economy and politics and has several impacts on multiple scales. This paper investigates the effects of the trajectories towards net zero emissions by 2050 through focusing on the spatial dimension of impacts, benefits, and losses for different stakeholders and technologies. Sp...
Article
The remaining carbon budget represents the total amount of CO2 that can still be emitted in the future while limiting global warming to a given temperature target. Remaining carbon budget estimates range widely, however, and this uncertainty can be used to either trivialize the most ambitious mitigation targets by characterizing them as impossible,...
Article
Full-text available
The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to strengthen the global response to climate change, and to maintain an average global temperature well below 2◦C, with aspirations toward 1.5◦C, by means of balancing sources and sinks of greenhouse gas emissions. Following this, the importance of carbon dioxide removal in global emission pathways has been further emp...
Article
Full-text available
The interdisciplinary exchange in climate engineering research offers a unique opportunity to make assumptions more explicit for such research projects. While making assumptions explicit is the standard in all disciplinary sciences, some assumptions in the context of societal challenges can only be usefully unveiled, discussed, and verified from th...
Article
Full-text available
The Zero Emissions Commitment (ZEC) is the change in global mean temperature expected to occur following the cessation of net CO2 emissions and as such is a critical parameter for calculating the remaining carbon budget. The Zero Emissions Commitment Model Intercomparison Project (ZECMIP) was established to gain a better understanding of the potent...
Article
Full-text available
One key contribution to the wide range of 1.5 °C carbon budgets among recent studies is the non-CO2 climate forcing scenario uncertainty. Based on a partitioning of historical non-CO2 forcing, we show that currently there is a net negative non-CO2 forcing from fossil fuel combustion (FFC), and a net positive non-CO2 climate forcing from land-use ch...
Preprint
Full-text available
Abstract. The University of Victoria Earth system climate model of intermediate complexity has been a useful tool in recent assessments of long-term climate changes including paleo-climate modelling. Since the last official release of the UVic ESCM 2.9, and the two official updates during the last decade, a lot of model development has taken place...
Article
Full-text available
The amount of additional future temperature change following a complete cessation of CO2 emissions is a measure of the unrealized warming to which we are committed due to CO2 already emitted to the atmosphere. This “zero emissions commitment” (ZEC) is also an important quantity when estimating the remaining carbon budget – a limit on the total amou...
Article
Full-text available
Cumulative CO2 emissions are a robust predictor of mean temperature increase. However, many societal impacts are driven by exposure to extreme weather conditions. Here, we show that cumulative emissions can be robustly linked to regional changes of a heat exposure indicator, as well as the resulting socioeconomic impacts associated with labour prod...
Presentation
Full-text available
• Annual total intensity of heat stress periods can be linearly linked to cumulative carbon emissions. • Relationship remains significantly linear at regional scales where signal is robust relative to the inter-model spread. • Differences between scenarios can be explained by non-CO2 forcing. • As with many other climate change impacts, it is the c...
Article
Full-text available
The amount of additional future temperature change following a complete cessation of CO2 emissions is a measure of the unrealized warming to which we are committed due to CO2 already emitted to the atmosphere. This "Zero Emissions Commitment" (ZEC) is also an important quantity when estimating the remaining carbon budget – a limit on the total amou...
Article
Full-text available
Climate engineering (CE) deployment would alter prevailing relationships between Earth system variables, making indicators and metrics used so far in the climate change assessment context less appropriate to assess CE measures. Achieving a comprehensive CE assessment requires a systematic and transparent reevaluation of the indicator selection proc...
Presentation
Full-text available
APARTHY IS BORING - Connect, Educate and Activate. RISE Montreal Cohort 3 Session 2: Panel et environmental fair https://www.apathyisboring.com/montreal
Poster
Full-text available
Climate change alters prevailing relationships between Earth system variables, making indicators and metrics used in the historical period less appropriate to assess future changes. Here we provide a first step towards such a systematic assessment of altered correlations due to climate change, by applying the Systematic Correlation Matrix Evaluatio...
Poster
Full-text available
The transient climate response for cumulative CO2 emissions (TCRE) enables us to estimate the total allowable CO2 emissions associated with a given CO2-induced temperature target. However, for this metric to be applicable to calculate the remaining carbon budget for ‘real world’ observed temperature changes, it needs to take into account the consid...
Presentation
Full-text available
Colloquium with regards to the appointment of a W1 professorship for Meteorology at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
Presentation
Full-text available
While estimates for the 1.5°C carbon budget vary among studies, there is one point that is often not made explicit: how much of the additional non-CO2 forcing is responsible for differences in carbon budget estimates? In a previous study we quantified the amount of equivalent CO2 emissions from individual non-CO2 forcing agents for a single emissio...
Article
Full-text available
Estimates of the 1.5 °C carbon budget vary widely among recent studies, emphasizing the need to better understand and quantify key sources of uncertainty. Here we quantify the impact of carbon cycle uncertainty and non-CO2 forcing on the 1.5 °C carbon budget in the context of a prescribed 1.5 °C temperature stabilization scenario. We use Bayes theo...
Article
Full-text available
This study introduces the Systematic Correlation Matrix Evaluation (SCoMaE) method, a bottom–up approach which combines expert judgment and statistical information to systematically select transparent, nonredundant indicators for a comprehensive assessment of the state of the Earth system. The methods consists of two basic steps: (1) the calculatio...
Presentation
Full-text available
In December 2015, the participants of the COP21 agreed to pursue efforts to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 C relative to the preindustrial level. A robust estimate of the carbon budget for this temperature target is one precondition for well-informed political discussions. These estimates, however, depend on Earth system models and need t...
Poster
Full-text available
Nations agreed to limit the increase in global mean surface temperature relative to the preindustrial era below 2 degrees Celsius and pursue efforts to a more ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to assess the amount of cumulative carbon emissions compatible with these temperature targets, i.e. so called ca...
Presentation
Research questions - Research methodology: anticipate potential future of climate engineering (CE) to assess present avenues - If CE is done, how could it be regulated, how could some party doing CE be held liable? - Which type of regulation can set (economic) incentives to conduct carbon dioxide removal, while avoiding negative ecosystem effects?...
Presentation
Full-text available
Policy advisors and research institutions increasingly emphasize the “need to understand the possibilities, limitations, and potential side effects” of so-called climate interventions. Understanding the impacts of climate engineering (CE) depends to a large extent on choosing the right indicators and metrics for assessing CE simulations. Although i...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
To enable fair, comprehensive and comparative decision-making on Climate Engineering, we need to foster a multidisciplinary and integrative selection process for assessment metrics. In this session we want to learn to what extent established climate-change assessment metrics are applicable for Climate Engineering assessment and what kind of extensi...
Presentation
This campfire session elucidates participants views on ”stopping rules” - the conditions under which people might consider downscaling or ceasing research into CE technologies, and ”starting rules” - conditions under which people may advocate a dramatic increase in research, or the commencement of research at the next level of scale (e.g. a move to...
Article
Full-text available
This study introduces the Systematic Correlation Matrix Evaluation (SCoMaE) method, a bottom-up approach which combines expert judgment and statistical information to systematically select transparent, non redundant indicators for a com- prehensive assessment of the state of the Earth system. The methods consists of three basic steps: 1) Calculatio...
Poster
Full-text available
Climate engineering (CE) alters prevailing relationships between Earth system variables, making indicators and metrics used in the climate mitigation debate less appropriate to assess CE measures. Achieving a comprehensive CE assessment requires a systematic and transparent reevaluation of the indicator selection process from Earth system variables...
Article
Full-text available
Selecting appropriate indicators is essential to aggregate the information provided by climate model outputs into a manageable set of relevant metrics on which assessments of climate engineering (CE) can be based. From all the variables potentially available from climate models, indicators need to be selected that are able to inform scientists and...
Thesis
Full-text available
Climate Engineering (CE) as an option to prevent dangerous climate change has reached the political debate. For a well informed decision on CE research and deployment in the future, work towards a comprehensive, comparative assessment is needed. In the first part of this thesis, climate impacts and side effects of an artificial Arctic ocean albedo...
Article
Full-text available
The ice albedo feedback is one of the key factors of accelerated temperature increase in the high northern latitudes under global warming. This study assesses climate impacts and risks of idealized Arctic Ocean albedo modification (AOAM), a proposed climate engineering method, during transient climate change simulations with varying representative...
Poster
Full-text available
Can an engineered ice-albedo feedback mechanism prevent further Arctic amplification of Climate Change and the crossing of potential future tipping elements?
Article
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While terrestrial precipitation is a societally highly relevant climate variable, there is little consensus among climate models about its projected 21st century changes. An important source of precipitable water over land is plant transpiration. Plants control transpiration by opening and closing their stomata. The sensitivity of this process to i...
Poster
Full-text available
• Measured, calculated, or forecasted quantitative variables (metrics) are used to assess the complex reality of the climate state. • What are the most commonly used metrics for the assessment of climate change and why? • Are the prevailing relationships between Earth system metrics still valid in an engineered climate? ➡The assessment of CE requir...