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: The news has been full of headlines about findings from a United Nations report: The world is set to exceed the 1.5°C global warming target set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The report has raised concerns and questions about what a 1.5°C increase could mean for our world.
As an Earth system scientist who has researched many aspects of the carbon cycle and long-term climate change, I was not surprised at the report's findings. The scientific community saw this grim milestone coming from a long way off. The vagaries of weather might make it seem that climate is fickle and prone to abrupt turns.
Climate extremes often strike without warning, suddenly erupting across our news feeds—or, if we are unlucky, into our own lives—like bolts from the blue. But global warming is like a freight train. It is massive, slow and has tremendous inertia.
That inertia comes from the slow thermal adjustment of the planet's oceans and atmosphere to the carbon dioxide we emit. Once released, carbon dioxide is slowly absorbed by the ocean or taken up by plants, and as long as it's in the atmosphere, the planet inexorably accumulates heat, day after day, year after year. This process does not make sudden movements, but just rolls along the track at a speed that's set by the global rate of emissions.
So 1.5°C was visible from a long way off, and it was clear just how quickly we needed to reduce emissions to avoid crossing it. Instead, the freight train continued to accelerate, the engine stoked with more coal, oil and natural gas than ever. Rolling across the 1.5°C threshold is a sign that we are now entering profoundly dangerous territory.
Crossing 1.5°C is a call for greater action, not despair. At Paris, the global community chose 1.5°C as a safe target—because the science showed that most of us would probably be fine if we stopped by this point. However, even in 2015, it seemed to those I knew in the field that it would have taken a miracle of global cooperation to bring climate change to a halt before the 1.5°C increase was passed.
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