New estimates made by a team of climate scientists suggest that the world is set to reach a key warming threshold set in the Paris accord by 2029.
The experts warned that the world only has five years left of pumping carbon into the atmosphere at the current rate before pushing global warming past the most ambitious limit set in the accord. The calculations add pressure to a dismal conclusion that many researchers have already taken as inevitable.
Key Warming Threshold
This is because the world is cutting emissions far too slowly to have much hope of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Human activity has already caused average global temperatures to rise by about 1.2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial conditions.
The most promising roads moving forward in order to avoid 1.5 degrees have already come to pass. A climate scientist at Imperial College London, Joeri Rogelj, said that these paths have been gone for a while. Rogelj was among the climate scientists who worked on the new projections, as per the New York Times.
Despite this, having an up-to-date picture of emissions and warming can provide assistance for governments to figure out how to meet less ambitious climate goals. These include the Paris Accord's second-best limit of 2 degrees Celsius. Experts note that extra increment of warming increases the risk of dangerous heat waves, floods, crop failures, species extinctions, and wildfires.
A climate scientist at the University of Leeds, Christopher J. Smith said that if we are able to limit warming to 1.6 degrees, 1.65 degrees, or 1.7 degrees, it is a lot better than 2 degrees. Smith, who also contributed to the recent calculations, said that we need to fight for every 10th of a degree.
The window of opportunity looked much bigger not that long ago as scientists convened by the United Nations said in 2021 that the world could continue emitting at the same rate for roughly 11 more years before blowing past the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold.
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Reducing Carbon Emissions
The hastening of the threshold comes as the world has made progress in cleaning up a different type of air pollution, tiny smoky particles known as aerosols. These slightly cool the planet and mask the effects of burning coal, oil, and natural gas, according to the Associated Press.
This means that by cleaning up aerosol pollution, which is a good thing, the world has inadvertently caused a faster rise in temperatures. The researchers published the study in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The team of scientists calculated what is referred to as the remaining "carbon budget." This is how much fossil fuels the world can burn and still have 50% of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Robin Lamboll of the Imperial College of London, the lead author of the study, said that the world is not doing nearly enough to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. He added that the lack of progress on emissions reduction means that they are more certain that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing, said USA Today.
