The world is on a path to get 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 Fahrenheit) warmer than it is now, but could trim half a degree of that projected future heating if countries do everything they promise to fight climate change, a United Nations report said Thursday.
But it still won’t be near enough to curb such as nastier heat waves, wildfires, storms and droughts, the report said. Under every scenario but the “most optimistic” with the biggest cuts in fossil fuels burning, the chance of curbing warming so it stays within the internationally agreed-upon limit “would be virtually zero,” the United Nations Environment Programme’s annual Emissions Gap Report said. The goal, set in the , is to limit human-caused warming to (2.
7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The report said that since the mid-1800s, the world has already heated up by 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.
3 degrees Fahrenheit), up from previous estimates of 1.1 or 1.2 degrees because it includes the record heat last year.
Instead the world is on pace to hit 3.1 degrees Celsius (5.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.
But if nations somehow do all of what they promised in targets they submitted to the United Nations that warming could be limited to 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the report said.
In that super-stringent cuts scenario where nations have zero net carbon emissions after mid-century, there’s a 23% chance of keeping warming at or below the 1.5 degrees goal. It’s far mor.