Three years of high temperatures will mean we have breached 1.5°C - New Scientist
Three years of high temperatures will mean we have breached 1.5°C | New Scientist
Children cool off during a heatwave in Mexico City Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu via Getty Images
Children cool off during a heatwave in Mexico City
Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu via Getty Images
Three individual years of high global average temperatures will be enough for scientists to conclude the 1.5°C climate goal is lost, a new analysis reveals.
In the 2015 Paris Agreement, almost every nation in the world signed up to an international treaty promising to limit any rise in global average temperatures to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to aim for just 1.5°C of warming.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.