What we can expect in a 1.5-degree-celsius world

LAST week, scientists in Europe who monitor global temperature and its effect on our planet shared data that we dare not ignore.

For the first time on record, the Earth has endured 12 consecutive months of temperatures 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than the pre-industrial era, the Copernicus Climate Change Service reported on Thursday.

While that does not breach the 2015 Paris Agreement to keep the global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius and pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels”, it is, as the scientists pointed out, a “warning to humanity”.

The devastating effects of climate change are playing out before our very eyes — severe drought, wild fires, melting glaciers and ice sheets, rising sea levels, and ferocious storms, especially in our region — presenting severe challenges to mankind.

The world also experienced record warming in 2023, making it possibly the hottest in 100,000 years, scientists have told us, pointing out that all we have seen so far is an alarming foretaste of future impacts, even if global warming can be capped at the Paris climate deal’s crucial 1.5°C threshold.

“We are touching 1.5°C and we see the cost — the social costs and economic costs,” an Agence France Presse (AFP) report quoted Professor Johan Rockstrom of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Additionally, the report quoted Professor Joeri Rogelj, director of research at Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, as saying, “Unless global emissions are urgently brought down to zero, the world will soon fly past the safety limits set out in the Paris climate agreement.”

Professor Rogelj also argued that while the revelation that the planet has endured warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius between February 2023 and January 2024 does not mean the Paris limit is exceeded, “it is undeniably bad news”.

The AFP report places into stark context the realities of a 1.5°C world to humans and the natural environment on which we rely to survive.

Increases in temperature, even if small, can expose vulnerable communities to dangerous threats, including heat that tests the very limit of human endurance; coral reefs — ecosystems that provide habitat for an immense array of marine life and protect coastlines — are projected to decline 70 to 90 per cent in a world that has warmed 1.5°C; and the loss of biodiversity globally will be among the most pronounced impacts of a 1.5°C warmer climate, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Currently the IPCC classifies the risk of permafrost melt in some regions as moderate, but says it would become high in a 1.5°C or even warmer climate. That has heightened concerns among scientists that accelerating permafrost thaw will release carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, creating a vicious cycle of warming.

All this underscores the urgent need to reduce planet-heating emissions but we have seen that large countries, which have greater carbon footprints, are plodding on, largely ignoring this crucial problem.

Against that background, small states like Jamaica must continue, and ramp up, our resilience and mitigation programmes.

The flooding we saw on the western end of the island last week underscores the urgency of that need.