World On Track To Be Hotter By 2.7 Degrees, Warmer By 1.2 Degrees Celsius Already

In 2015, during the COP21 Climate Summit in Paris, world leaders came together to pledge that they will work towards reducing carbon emissions to ensure that global warming is restricted to 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial levels.

Since then several steps have been taken around the world and more were announced in the ongoing COP26 summit in Glasgow.

AP

But a new report has said that the time for that may have already passed.

Already warmer by 1.2 degrees

Climate Action Tracker, which for years has monitored nations' emission cutting pledges, said based on those submitted targets the world is now on track to warm 2.4 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times by the end of this century. That's a far cry from the 2015 Paris climate deal overarching limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius or even its fallback limit of 2 degrees Celsius.

The world has already warmed 1.1 to 1.2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times.

AP

Given what's been pledged ¡°we are likely to be in that area 2.4 degrees, which is still catastrophic climate change and far, far away from the goals of the Paris Agreement,¡± said climate scientist Niklas Hohne of the New Climate Institute and the Climate Action Tracker. And his group's estimate is more optimistic than a United Nations Environment Programme update Tuesday that has future warming still at 2.5 to 2.7 degrees.

Hohne's group also looked at how much warming there would be if other, less firm national promises were put into effect. If all the submitted national targets and other promises that have a bit of the force of law are included, future warming drops down to 2.1 degrees.

Reuters

Best case scenario

And in the ¡°optimistic scenario¡± if all the net-zero pledges for mid-century are taken into account ¡ª and they have little substance in them ¡ª warming would be 1.8 degrees, Hohne said.

That's the same figure as the International Energy Agency came up with for that optimistic scenario and a tenth of a degree warmer than an independent Australian climate scientist calculated.

The report highlights the challenges facing climate negotiations, given the yawning gap between the emissions cuts needed this decade to keep warming to 1.5C and the continuing increases in greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere.

Not done enough

COP26 President Alok Sharma said it shows that "there has been some progress but clearly not enough".

AFP

"What we have always said is that we want at this COP to able to say with credibility that we are keeping 1.5 alive, and that's what we will be working at over the next few days," he said on Tuesday.

Experts have said several new pledges at COP26 could have a significant effect, including India's net-zero commitment and an international agreement to cut 30 percent of global methane emissions by 2030.

These have given rise to a number of recalculated global warming projections.

UN Climate Change said last week that countries' renewed NDCs -- updated every five years under the Paris agreement -- would see emissions climb 13.7 percent by 2030 before sharply declining thereafter.

To keep in line with 1.5C, emissions must instead fall 45 percent by then.

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