In recent years, international climate policy has increasingly focused on limiting temperature rise, as opposed to achieving greenhouse-gas-concentration-related objectives. The agreements reached at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Cancun in 2010 recognize that countries should take urgent action to limit the increase in global average temperature to less than 2 °C relative to pre-industrial levels. If this is to be achieved, policymakers need robust information about the amounts of future greenhouse-gas emissions that are consistent with such temperature limits. This, in turn, requires an understanding of both the technical and economic implications of reducing emissions and the processes that link emissions to temperature.

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