Climate policies put world on track for 3.3C warming

KATOWICE, Poland: Average world temperatures are on track to far exceed the central goal set in the 2015 Paris Agreement on limiting global warming, a study showed yesterday.

But the overshoot by the end of this century could be slightly less severe than previously expected thanks to significant efforts by some countries to combat climate change, the report by Carbon Action Tracker (CAT) – a consortium of three independent European research groups - said.

The Paris Agreement aims to restrict warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius above preindustrial times.

The CAT report said there had been some progress on the ground since 2015, and current policies meant the world was heading for warming of 3.3C.

That compared with the 3.4C it predicted a year ago, and it said that if governments were to implement planned or extra policies they had in the pipeline, warming by 2100 could be limited to 3C. — Reuters