What would happen if we stopped all CO2 emissions tomorrow

[Yika]

Would the earth carry on warming as a result of the trends already set in motion? Would warming gradually slow down? Or do we not know?

(Obviously, I know the question is completely hypothetical!)

No, it'll increase but increase with a lower speed. But stopping the emissions "tomorrow" is unfortunately not possible. I read an article (think it was in IPE magazine) that we're currently on a "six degree warmer"-course.

I think we are "committed" to a certain amount of warming.

I heard Susan Solomon talk about this as she did some work on it. It turns out that the global temperature would stop rising.

This is because the oceans would continue to absorb some of the carbon dioxide we have released in previous years and so the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would decrease. But this effect would be balanced by the fact that the temperature now is not as high as it would be if we kept CO2 concentrations constant.

I think this was the paper.
m.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704

This is really interesting, many thanks for the responses.

The earth would continue to warm and cool even without the existence of humans. The debate I guess is how much we have influenced it.

This article shows a graph on what may happen if we stopped CO2 emission immediately.

www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/climate-change-commitments/

CO2 would fall as the oceans have not caught up with the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Temperature would stay about the same and then fall slowly.
Sea level would continue to rise, slowly for another century or two as ice on Greenland hasn't had a chance to melt in response to current temperature.

Another study predicts a warming of about 0.4C before it would fall again.
www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Froelicher/publication/259313176_Continued_global_warming_after_CO_2_emissions_stoppage/links/00b4952afc875c32cc000000.pdf

I wonder if these studies accounted for aerosols (dust) released from burning fossil fuels. If we stopped emitting all CO2 we must have stopped burning fuels. Therefore the aerosols in the air would become less which would mean more warming.

The studies will have accounted for aerosols, but the problem is that there is so much uncertainty in the strength of that effect that it could be stronger or weaker than the average.

Just a thought... my diesel car is spewing out particulates that can affect folk. So I can give it up and get a petrol car that reduces the particulates totally, but spews out 20% more CO2.
It is a philosophical question I do not know the answer to- do we protect humans as in no diesel, or do we protect the world by producing less CO2? Humans or Planet Earth. Which is more important? Philosophically speaking!

Well, no point in protecting humans if society collapses due to climate change. But it's not an either/or. We need to put pressure on national and local governments to make public transport, cycling and walking easier, cheaper, safer and more convenient, so that we can reduce car use.

We're at 1.2C of warming. Another 0.5C from climate lag and another 0.5C from global dimming = 2.2C if we stop all emissions today. Plus already triggered feedback loops (there are 72!!) which adds more CO2e than the planet's current draw down (oceans, forest, peat bogs).
So we have left it too late but every day and every unit of CO2e counts! Lets stop ASAP and rewild and support mother nature to get us back to safe CO2e (350 ppm)

If you look at the latest IPCC report then yes further warming is going to happen regardless of what we do now because of the greenhouse gases (GHG) already emitted. The full report is over 1500 pages but there are shorter summaries!
If you think of the planet like being in bed, we keep adding blankets you'll get warmer faster but we've already added enough that you're getting too hot. You can't take any blankets off.
(Hopefully no-one finds that analogy patronising, I just thought of it).

So the news today that the UK had to fire up two standby coal fired generating plants to compensate for the lack of windpower and the surge in gas prices isn't going to help.