Earth getting too hot way too fast

THE Earth is so hot this year that a limit for global warming agreed by world leaders at a climate summit in Paris just a few months ago is in danger of being breached.

In December, almost 200 nations agreed on a radical shift away from fossil fuels with the goal of limiting a rise in average global temperatures to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial times while “pursuing efforts” for 1.5ºC.

But 2016 is on track to be the hottest year on record, also buoyed by a natural El Niño event warming the Pacific, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation. The first six months were a sweltering 1.3ºC above pre-industrial times.

“It opens a Pandora’s box,” said Oliver Geden, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

“The future debate about temperature targets will be about overshoot.”

Many climate scientists say the Paris targets are likely to be breached in the coming decades, shifting debate to whether it will be possible to turn down the global thermostat. Climate scientists will meet in Geneva from August 15-18 to plan a UN report about the 1.5ºC goal, requested by world leaders in the Paris Agreement for publication in 2018. Overshoot is among the issues in prepara- tory documents.

“There is a risk that overshoot is a slippery slope towards lower ambition,” said Emmanuel de Guzman, secretary of the Climate Commission of the Philippines, which chairs a group of 43 emerging nations in the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF).

Backing that view at the Rio Olympics, some athletes have signs saying: “1.5 – the record we must not break” in a campaign partly run by the CVF. The 1.5ºC threshold could be in jeopardy within five years on current trends of world greenhouse gas emissions, led by China and the US, and 2ºC within about 25 years, according to UN calculations.

Brazilian scientist Thelma Krug, who will lead the Geneva meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said a “wholesale transformation” of economies will be required to achieve the Paris targets.

Many IPCC scenarios in recent years discuss ways to extract heat-trapping carbon dioxide from nature. If applied on a wide enough scale, such “negative emissions” could reduce temperatures after an overshoot. But there are many pitfalls.

“It’s hard to avoid overshoot. It’s more a question of the size,” said Glen Peters of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo. – Reuters