Global Warming to Make Earth at Least 1.5 Degrees Hotter by 2040
Global temperatures are expected to increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius or more in the next two decades from pre-industrial levels unless “immediate, rapid and large-scale” reductions in greenhouse gases are achieved, climate experts have warned. Failure to stem the rot could render the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees by the next decades “beyond reach,” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body, said in a report. Human activities have raised temperatures by 1.1 degrees since 1850. The Paris climate agreement of 2015 seeks to limit the threshold of 1.5 to 2 degrees by 2100. “Climate change is already affecting every region on Earth, in multiple ways,” Panmao Zhai, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group, said. “The changes we experience will increase with additional warming.” Even if strong and sustained carbon emission reduction is achieved, it will take two to three decades for global temperatures to stabilise, and some of the impacts – such as an increase in sea level – will not be reversed for hundreds or maybe thousands of years, the report said. If immediate efforts are brought in for carbon emission to fall rapidly and substantially so that net zero emission is achieved by 2050, global warming can be limited to close to 1.5 degrees by mid-century and remain slightly lower than that level by the end of the century, she said. The IPCC report provides new estimates of the chances of crossing the global warming level of 1.5 degrees in the next decades. Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5 or even 2 degrees “will be beyond reach,” it added.
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