'Crunch time' on climate
UN scientists have warned that the world is in “crunch time” to avoid higher levels of warming beyond the key threshold of 1.5C but that drivers of climate change are “all moving in the wrong direction”.
A team of more than 60 international scientists have put together a comprehensive picture of the current state of the climate in their annual report, and calculated the human-driven factors behind the changes the world is experiencing.
It comes as part of efforts to provide regular updates between landmark UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, the last of which was published in 2021 and the next of which is expected in 2028.
Exceeded
The group examined the amount of planet-heating carbon dioxide (CO2) the world can release into the atmosphere in the coming years while limiting warming to the UN target of 1.5C.
The report estimates that the remaining “carbon budget” for 1.5C is emitting 130 billion tonnes of C02 from the beginning of 2025, if the world is to have a 50 per cent chance to stay within the threshold.
However, this budget will be exhausted in little more than three years at current levels of CO2 emissions, according to the findings published in the journal Earth System Science Data.
This means that without drastic cuts to emissions, the world will be unable to prevent warming from surpassing the dangerous threshold, which will lead to a rise in extreme weather events, climate-related disasters and increase the risk of triggering irreversible changes.
The report also warned the carbon budget for 1.6C or 1.7C could also be exceeded within nine years, which will significantly intensify these impacts.
Cruising
The scientists’ long-term estimates show current average global temperatures to be 1.24C higher than in pre-industrial times.
Professor Joeri Rogelj, research director at the Grantham Institute, said: “Under any course of action, there is a very high chance that we will reach and even exceed 1.5C and even higher levels of warming.
“1.5C is an iconic level but we are currently already in crunch time… to avoid higher levels of warming with a decent likelihood or a prudent likelihood as well and that is true for 1.7C, but equally so for 1.8C if we want to have a high probability there.”
But Prof Rogelj added that reductions in emissions over the next decade can still “critically change” the rate of warming and limit the magnitude and the extent by which the world exceeds 1.5C.
“It’s really the difference between just cruising through 1.5C towards much higher levels of 2C or trying to limit warming somewhere in the range of 1.5,” he said.
Highs
Piers Forster, professor of climate physics at the University of Leeds, who has helped author IPCC reports, said the report highlights how climate policies and pace of climate action “are not keeping up with what’s needed to address the ever-growing impacts”.