‘1.5°C threshold likely to be breached by 2030’

The 1.5 degree C threshold for global warming, the redline as far as the climate crisis is concerned, may be breached as early as the end of the current decade, two Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s co-chairs said.

Hans-otto Pörtner, IPCC co-chair said: “Co-chairs do not hold a crystal ball but clearly the chances are already high and increasing daily that we shall miss holding warming to that important limit. Only a massive mobilisation towards transformation of energy use, industry, infrastructure, society and how we deal with ecosystems will keep that limit within reach. With unabated emission, 1.5°C warming will be passed around the end of this decade and may be reached during individual years even earlier.”

Co-chair, Debra Roberts added: “The best available science assessed by the IPCC indicates that the world will most likely reach 1.5°C global warming in the period 2021-2040.”

IPCC conducts regular assessments of climate science and identifies where there is agreement in the scientific community on topics related to climate change.

Breaching the threshold — it is the extent by which the world will warm from pre-industrial levels — pushes the world into dangerous territory triggering several tipping points. To be sure, there was never a pragmatic chance of keeping global warming below this benchmark, the primary and most sacred goal of the Paris climate agreement of 2015, which aimed to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But it was retained simply because abandoning it was tantamount to accepting defeat. On the basis of the latest Nationally Determined Contributions, for instance, the world is expected to warm by 2.4 to 2.7 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by the end of this century as per United Nations Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report. But 1.5 degrees is important in other ways as well.

“1.5°C global warming represents the transition into a high-risk future for humankind and nature... However, the required political effort and societal mobilisation becomes massive, due to delays caused by barriers and short-sighted resistance...,” said Pörtner.