This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Global temperature rise is set to cross 1.5°C, likely within the next few years, pushing climate risks and impacts to increasingly dangerous heights. But it is still possible to bring temperatures down and achieve the global goals of the Paris Agreement, according to a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.
The report, Limiting Overshoot, identifies an "overshoot, peak and decline" pathway as the best remaining option to minimize the magnitude and duration of this overshoot and try to return to below 1.5°C as soon as possible. "Ten years ago in Paris, leaders pledged to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C, the threshold scientists say is critical to avoiding the worst climate devastation. The latest report from the UN Environment Programme delivers a stark warning: The world is failing to keep that promise.
We are set to breach the 1.5-degree limit within the next few years," UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a message on the report. "We must make the overshoot as small and short as possible—limiting how high temperatures rise and how long they remain above 1.5°C. That demands an overshoot of ambition: accelerating the phaseout of fossil fuels and the renewables revolution; slashing methane pollution; and protecting land, forests and oceans." This pathway would minimize peak temperature rise through immediate and sustained cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, including methane, on the road to net-zero, and bring down temperatures through long-term net-negative emissions.
Carefully governed carbon dioxide removal (CDR)—the process of removing carbon from the air and storing it through afforestation or other means—would be an essential part of the mix. At the same time, following the pathway would involve adaptation actions that reduce vulnerability to the current, expected and unexpected impacts of climate change on societies, communities and economies—although there will likely be limits to adaptation and irreversible impacts, especially if peak temperatures are not minimized. The report stresses that such a pathway would reduce risks and impacts, make adaptation less difficult and expensive, and increase the chances of lowering temperatures.
"There are no good outcomes if we remain above 1.5°C. Across the globe, extreme heat waves are already proving that climate impacts will strike faster, hit harder and last longer—costing more lives and causing deeper disruption," said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP. "Now is the time we must double down on climate action.
We can—and must—get on the right path by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening resilience and adaptation, and ensuring any exceedance of 1.5°C is as small and short as possible." The most optimistic scenario will see temperature rise peak at 1.8°C above preindustrial levels, above the goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C set by the Paris Agreement. Most other scenarios predict higher peaks. Above 1.5°C, risks and impacts will intensify with every extra fraction of a degree and every year.
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