The rise in global temperature is on track to soon exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius, likely within the next few years, a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report showed on Wednesday.
In the best-case scenario, peak temperature rise will reach 1.8 C, the Limiting Overshoot report found.
“While the international community has made progress on climate change, global action to cut greenhouse gas emissions has not been fast enough to avoid global warming crossing 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in the next few years” the UN said in the report.
This means that the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement to keep warming below 1.5 degrees would not be within reach, according to the UN.
Even an optimistic scenario of current government pledges with full implementation of all national climate plans plus meeting additional net-zero targets puts expected peak temperature rise at 1.8°C.
Under current policies, the median projected rise in global temperature would reach around 2.6°C by 2100, with a range of 1.9 to 3.6°C, the UN said.
“In all cases, central estimates indicate that global warming will cross 1.5°C within the next decade,” said the UN, warning that the climate impacts of entering a 1.5 C warmer world are already dangerous, and urging even faster emissions reductions.
“This summer’s scorching heat, raging wildfires and deadly floods are a warning of what lies ahead,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
“We must make the overshoot above 1.5 degrees as small and short as possible. That demands an overshoot of ambition.”
This summer’s heatwaves have also impacted Europe’s power generation and tested energy systems from France to Romania as record-low low river levels forced the shutdown of nuclear power capacities and scarce rainfall limited hydropower generation.
Romania, for example, had to restart a 300-megawatt coal-fired power plant to partially offset the generation lost by the closure of nuclear electricity output after the low water level on the Danube river forced a shutdown of the country’s only nuclear power plant.
By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com
