How will the world respond to the unprecedented occurrence of the first annual global breach of the critical 1.5°C warming limit?
In order to help prevent the worst effects, world leaders made a commitment in 2015 to attempt to keep the global temperature increase to 1.5C.
The historic “Paris agreement” is not broken by this first year-long violation, but it does get the world closer to doing so in the long run.
Scientists think that urgent effort to reduce carbon emissions can still delay global warming.
According to Prof. Liz Bentley, CEO of the Royal Meteorological Society, “to go over [1.5C of warming] on an annual average is significant.”
“It’s one more step in the incorrect path. However, we are aware of our obligations.”
A major emblem of global efforts to combat climate change is the restriction of long-term warming to 1.5C over “pre-industrial” levels, or before people began using huge amounts of fossil fuels.
The hazards of climate change, including extreme heatwaves, rising sea levels, and the extinction of wildlife, were significantly greater at 2C of warming than they were at 1.5C, according to a historic UN assessment published in 2018.
However, as the graph below illustrates, temperatures have continued to rise at an alarming rate based on data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service over the past year. There was a 1.52C increase in temperature between February 2023 and January 2024.
Is there any way to stop global warming?
The Paris Agreement’s objective of keeping global warming to 1.5C as a long-term average rather than a single year may be reached within the next ten years at the current rate of emissions.
Researchers suggest that while this would be a very symbolic milestone, there wouldn’t be a climatic cliff.
Prof. Myles Allen, of the University of Oxford and Gresham College, and a lead author of the UN’s historic 2018 report, claims that there is “no threshold beyond which climate change will spin out of control.”
Nonetheless, the effects of climate change will only intensify—as the past 12 months’ intense heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and floods have shown us.
“Every tenth of a degree of warming causes more harm than the last one,” Professor Allen says.
Passing “tipping points” is also far more likely as global temperature climbs by an additional half a degree, or the difference between 1.5C and 2C.
The climate system contains several thresholds, and if they are crossed, the changes might be swift and possibly irreversible.
Prof. Bentley explains that in the centuries that would follow, “catastrophic” changes in global sea levels would result from the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets collapsing due to a potential uncontrolled collapse.
However, scientists are eager to emphasize that there is still hope for people to influence the global warming trend.
The globe has come a long way, with the use of green technologies such as electric vehicles and renewable energy sources growing around the world.
Accordingly, some of the worst-case scenarios of at least 4C of warming this century—which were deemed plausible a decade ago—now seem far less likely, given present policies and commitments.
Possibly the most positive of all is that there is still belief that once net zero carbon emissions are achieved, global warming will essentially cease. It is seen to be especially important to effectively cut emissions this decade.
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