Comment
Insights and expert analysis on climate issues.
Share
Reports of breaching 1.5°C warming soon are exaggerated
Bill Hare, Dr Michiel Schaeffer, Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner
A new paper argues that the Paris Agreement 1.5°C temperature limit could be exceeded "before 2029," but this conclusion is problematic. Here's the detailed response from our scientists.
In addition to the sixth assessment report and the special report on 1.5°C, the IPCC has two other special reports in the works: one on how climate change impacts land and another on oceans and cryosphere. Both are of great importance to vulnerable countries, like small islands. Although there will not be an explicit reference to the issue of loss and damage, thanks to a strong push by vulnerable countries both outlines now incorporate some of its core components, like climate change attribution, residual risk and adaptation limits.
In its latest study, Faster and Cleaner 2: Kick-Starting Decarbonization, the Climate Action Tracker looked at the trends driving decarbonisation in key sectors. It turns out that it has taken only a few players to set in motion the kind of transformations that will be necessary to meet Paris Agreement’s goals.
"Winning the future will not be done with technologies of the past" — Climate Analytics' Dr Fahad Saeed writes about Pakistan's plans to massively expand its coal capacity.
Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement with its 1.5°C temperature limit, climate scientists are preparing a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of climate change under 1.5ºC warming in global average temperature. Here’s an overview of what we already know and what we would need to learn from the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C due in 2018 regarding impacts on agriculture.
The latest Climate Action Tracker report looked at major emitting sectors and at what can be done – and how fast – to come up with a list of the most important things to do in the next decade to bend the emissions curve downwards. Bill Hare and Niklas Höhne talk about some of these key steps and the progress to date.