IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007
Climate Change 2007: Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
Figure 19.2

Figure 19.2. Top panel: Probability of exceedence of a range of temperature thresholds for overshoot (OS500) and non-overshoot (SC500) scenarios, derived from probability distributions for climate sensitivity (see ‘Key caveat’ above on low confidence for specific quantitatitive results). OS500 Max is derived from the maximum overshoot temperature that occurs during the transient response before 2200, whereas OS500 in 2200 and SC500 in 2200 are derived from temperatures in 2200. While model-dependent, these results demonstrate the importance of considering transient temperature change when evaluating mitigation strategies to avoid key vulnerabilities. Bottom panel: Visualisation of maximum exceedence amplitude (MEA) and degree years (DY) for an illustrative overshoot temperature profile. Source: Schneider and Mastrandrea (2005).