A Scheme for Jointly Trading off Costs and Risks of Solar Radiation Management and Mitigation Under Long-Tailed Climate Sensitivity Probability Density Distributions

Abstract Side effects of “solar-radiation management” (SRM) might be perceived as an important metric when society decides on implementing SRM a climate policy option to alleviate anthropogenic global warming. We generalize cost-risk analysis that originally trades off expected welfare loss from costs and risks transgressing targets also include applying SRM. In first step acknowledging risks, we represent precipitation mismatch prominent side effect under long-tailed probabilistic knowledge about sensitivity. maximize social function for the following three scenarios, considering alternative relative weights risks: temperature-risk-only, precipitation-risk-only, equally-weighted both-risks. Our shows in temperature-risk-only scenario, perfect compliance with 2 °C-temperature target is attained all numerically represented sensitivities, unique feature SRM, but °C-compatible corridor violated. The precipitation-risk-only scenario exhibits approximate mirror-image this result. addition, both-risks almost 90% can achieved temperature targets, respectively. Moreover, mitigation-only analysis, mitigation cost plus residual compared no-climate-policy option, approximately 4.3% (in terms balanced growth equivalent), while being reduced more than joint-mitigation-SRM analysis.