Hughes et al. (2026): Sustained Neutralization of the Warming Response to Emissions through a Portfolio of GHG Mitigation Strategies – Preprint
Ella Hughes, Zeke Hausfather, Randall Spock and Christopher Van Arsdale, IN: CDRxiv, https://doi.org/10.70212/cdrxiv.2026521.v1
Both emissions abatement and carbon dioxide removal will play a critical role in achieving a global net-zero scenario under which temperatures are stabilized. In the near term, organizations pursuing their own net-zero targets may use superpollutant emission abatement and both shorter- and longer-durability carbon dioxide removal to compensate for their remaining emissions. Because these mitigation strategies have climate impacts across distinct timescales, they can serve as powerful and complementary tools to address both the acute near-term and long-term equilibrium warming response to emissions. However, the distinct timescales of these impacts mean that, if accounting approaches are to ensure emissions remain compensated across all time horizons, they must explicitly evaluate the impact of each mitigation strategy as a function of time. The authors propose one such accounting approach, based on sustained warming neutralization.