Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Over the past three years, global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels have remained relatively flat. However, early estimates from the Global Carbon Project (GCP) using preliminary data suggest that this is likely to change in 2017 with global emissions set to grow by around 2%, albeit with some uncertainties.
In a commentary paper for the journal Geophysical Research Letters, we show that the temperature limits in the Paris Agreement should be understood as changes in long-term global averages attributed to human activity, which exclude natural variability. This means 1.5C might be breached in individual years well before the global long-term 1.5C temperature limit has definitively been crossed.
A new study published in the Nature Geosciences journal this week by largely UK-based climate scientists has led to claims in the media that climate models are “wrong” and have significantly overestimated the observed warming of the planet. Here Carbon Brief shows why such claims are a misrepresentation of the paper’s main results.
Observational records show us that half a degree of warming in the recent past has brought significant increases in extreme weather events, which provides another line of evidence for what an additional 0.5C of warming could entail. Differentiating climate impacts between 1.5C and 2C warming above pre-industrial levels has been a hot topic in climate science since the adoption of the 1.5C long-term temperature limit in the Paris Agreement and much research is underway for inclusion in the IPCC special report on impacts at 1.5C warming.
The cost of allowing global temperature to rise to 2C, rather than capping warming at 1.5C, is an area of permafrost the size of Mexico, according to new research. The study, carried out by a team of scientists from Sweden, Norway and the UK, is the first to work out what the ambitious targets contained in the Paris Agreement mean for permafrost loss.
The Paris Agreement’s inclusion of “well below 2°C” and “pursue … 1.5°C” has catalysed fervent activity amongst many within the scientific community keen to understand what this more ambitious objective implies for mitigation.
Entitled “The Sky’s Limit: Why the Paris Climate Goals Require a Managed Decline of Fossil Fuel Production,” the report says that just burning fossil fuels from projects presently in operation will produce enough greenhouse gas emissions to push the world well past 2°C of warming this century. Limiting warming to 1.5°C calls for even larger closures of existing operations.
Limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C has long been the goal of developing countries and those most at risk from climate change. Since becoming enshrined in the Paris Agreement last December, the 1.5C goal has come under increased scrutiny and examination.
The 2015 Paris climate talks put the 1.5°C temperature target firmly on the policy-making table, whilst also signing off on actions consistent with 3°C or more of warming.
The head of the United Nation’s climate body has called for a thorough assessment of the feasibility of the international goal to limit warming to 1.5C.
The Paris climate conference set the ambitious goal of finding ways to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, rather than the previous threshold of 2 degrees. But what would be the difference between a 1.5 and 2 degree world? And how realistic is such a target?
The Paris climate talks are over, and the postmortems on the final agreement are flooding in. Here’s our take…
