42% chance of breaching 1.5°C goal even if all carbon emissions cease

The author is Adam Vaughan.

There is a 42 percent chance of the world breaching its 1.5C climate change goal even if global emissions stop overnight, according to researchers.

The Paris Agreement pledges to hold temperature rises since pre-industrial times to 1.5C, but a new analysis shows that regardless of the short term.

If emissions were to be halted, the University of Washington in Seattle and her colleagues created a model of what temperatures would be like in the future. Historical emissions have left us with a 42 per cent chance of exceeding 1.5C, an increase on a 33 per cent chance just four years ago.

The team shows that it is possible to meet the Paris Agreement's weaker backstop of 2C if emissions are cut quickly. If we stopped emitting today, the chance of exceeding 2C would be 2%.

If emissions follow a medium path in the future, the figure will go up to 66 per cent. Climate action is expected to bring the world down from a medium emissions pathway.

The absolute minimum of warming given the CO 2 already committed to the atmosphere is what they are looking at.

Climate Action Tracker found that countries' progress on their emissions-cutting plans has "stalled" since last year's UN climate summit. The group said the governments made a promise at COP26 to strengthen their plans.

In May, atmospheric concentrations of CO 2 reached an average of more than 400 parts per million, 50 per cent above pre-industrial levels.

The journal refers to Nature Climate Change.

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