Evaluating China's role in achieving the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement

Now that many large emitting countries have set goals for reaching zero emissions in this century at the COP26, it is important to clarify the role of each country in achieving the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement. Here, we evaluated China's role by calculating the global temperature impacts caused by different national emission pathways to zero emissions in the future. Our results showed that China's contribution to global warming in 2050 is 0.17°C on average, with a range of 0.1°C to 0.22°C. Specifically, the peak contributions of these pathways vary from 0.1°C to 0.23°C, with the years reached distributing between 2036 and 2065. The large difference in peak temperature arises from the differences in emission pathways of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and sulfur dioxide (SO2). We further analyzed the effect of the different mix of CO2 and CH4 mitigation trajectories from China's pathways on the global mean temperature. We found that near-term CH4 mitigation reduces the peak temperature in the mid-century, whereas it plays a less important role in determining the end-of-thecentury contribution to reaching the global temperature warming goal of 1.5°C. The most effective way to shave the peak temperature would be early CH4 mitigation action, further contributing to reducing the temperature overshoot along the way toward the 1.5°C target