Ambitious 1.5C Paris climate target is still possible, new analysis shows

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Ambitious 1.5C Paris climate target is still possible, new analysis shows

Goal to limit warming to 1.5C to avoid the worst impacts of climate change was seen as unreachable, but updated research suggests it could be met if strong action is taken

Damian Carrington Environment editor
Monday 18 September 2017 16.00 BST

The highly ambitious aim of limiting global warming to less than 1.5C remains in reach, a new scientific analysis shows.

The 1.5C target was set as an aspiration by the global Paris climate change deal in 2015 to limit the damage wreaked by extreme weather and sea level rise.

It was widely seen as impossible because analysis at the time indicated it required carbon emissions to fall to zero within seven years, a speed deemed “incompatible with democracy” by one climate economist.

However, an updated analysis using the latest data shows the global carbon emissions budget that meets the 1.5C goal is significantly bigger than thought, equivalent to 20 years of current annual emissions.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/18/ambitious-15c-paris-climate-target-is-still-possible-new-analysis-shows

[OKIsItJustMe]

1. New hopes for limiting warming to 1.5C

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-09-18-new-hopes-limiting-warming-15%C2%B0c

New hopes for limiting warming to 1.5°C

18 September 2017

Significant emission reductions are required if we are to achieve one of the key goals of the Paris Agreement, and limit the increase in global average temperatures to 1.5°C; a new Oxford University partnership warns.

In a collaboration involving the University of Exeter, University College London and several other national and international partners, researchers from the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute (ECI) and Oxford Martin School have investigated the geophysical likelihood of limiting global warming to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C.”

Published today in the journal Nature Geoscience, the paper concludes that limiting the increase in global average temperatures above pre-industrial levels to 1.5°C, the goal of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, is not yet geophysically impossible, but likely requires more ambitious emission reductions than those pledged so far.

Three approaches were used to evaluate the outstanding ‘carbon budget’ (the total amount of CO2 emissions compatible with a given global average warming) for 1.5°C: re-assessing the evidence provided by complex Earth System Models, new experiments with an intermediate-complexity model, and evaluating the implications of current ranges of uncertainty in climate system properties using a simple model. In all cases the level of emissions and warming to date were taken into account.

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https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo3031