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For almost a decade, keeping global warming below 1.5C has been one of the defining goals of global climate action. Now, for the first time, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has concluded that the world is likely to breach that threshold within the next few years, while also making clear that crossing it does not mean temperatures have to remain there or that further efforts to limit warming become futile.
Published on Wednesday, UNEP’s Limiting Overshoot report describes what it calls an “overshoot, peak and decline” pathway, in which temperatures rise beyond 1.5C before peaking as greenhouse gas emissions fall towards net zero, then begin to decline if humanity succeeds in removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it releases.
Under the most ambitious scenario examined by UNEP, warming would peak at around 1.8C by the middle of the century. By contrast, policies currently in place would put the world on course for around 2.6C of warming by 2100, according to the report, which underlines why every fraction of a degree avoided continues to reduce the scale of harm.
