7 August 2016, The Guardian, Scientists warn world will miss key climate target. Grim backdrop to vital global emissions talks as new analysis shows 1.5C limit on warming is close to being broken. Leading climate scientists have warned that the Earth is perilously close to breaking through a 1.5C upper limit for global warming, only eight months after the target was set. The decision to try to limit warming to 1.5C, measured in relation to pre-industrial temperatures, was the headline outcome of the Paris climate negotiations last December. The talks were hailed as a major success by scientists and campaigners, who claimed that, by setting the target, desertification, heatwaves, widespread flooding and other global warming impacts could be avoided. However, figures – based on Met Office data – prepared by meteorologist Ed Hawkins of Reading University show that average global temperatures were already more than 1C above pre-industrial levels for every month except one over the past year and peaked at +1.38C in February and March. Keeping within the 1.5C limit will be extremely difficult, say scientists, given these rises. These alarming figures will form the backdrop to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change talks in Geneva this month, when scientists will start to outline ways to implement the climate goals set in Paris. Dates for abandoning all coal-burning power stations and halting the use of combustion engines across the globe – possibly within 15 years – are likely to be set. Read More here
Tag Archives: UNFCCC
17 June 2016, The Guardian, What would a global warming increase of 1.5C be like? How ambitious is the world? The Paris climate conference last December astounded many by pledging not just to keep warming “well below two degrees celsius,” but also to “pursue efforts” to limit warming to 1.5C. That raised a hugely important question: What’s the difference between a two-degree world and a 1.5-degree world? Given we are already at one degree above pre-industrial levels, halting at 1.5C would look to be at least twice as hard as the two-degree option.So would it be worth it? And is it even remotely achievable? In Paris, delegates called on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to report on the implications of a 1.5C target. They want the job done by 2018, in time to inform renewed talks on toughening emissions targets beyond those agreed upon in Paris. But the truth is that scientists are only now getting out of the blocks to address what a 1.5C world would look like, because until recently it sounded like a political and technological impossibility. As a commentary published online in Nature Climate Change last week warned, there is “a paucity of scientific analysis” about the consequences of pursuing a 1.5C target. To remedy this, the paper’s researchers, led by Daniel Mitchell and others at Oxford University, called for a dedicated program of research to help inform what they described as “arguably one of the most momentous [decisions] to be made in the coming decade.” And they are on the case, with their own dedicated website and a major conference planned at Oxford in the fall. So what is at stake? There are two issues to address. First, what would be gained by going the extra mile for 1.5? And second, what would it take to deliver? Read More here
23 May 2016, The Conversation, Why has climate change disappeared from the Australian election radar? Two weeks into a protracted election campaign, it is looking ever-more likely that climate change is to be placed way down the order of business – at least for the major parties. The contest over climate change that characterised the previous three elections seems to have disappeared off the political radar despite the issue being more urgent than ever. Since the Paris climate summit, global average temperatures continue to break month-on-month records. Just a few weeks after the summit, the North Pole was briefly not even able to reach freezing point – in the middle of winter. And just this month, Cape Grim surpassed a 400 ppm baseline minimum. Then there is the truly frightening climate spiral developed by Ed Hawkins from the University of Reading. It shows what an El Niño amplified global temperature has climbed to. The spiral assumes a tight-knit but ever-expanding ball until April 2015, when the spiral line starts to separate dramatically from the ball. This year it careers dangerously close to the 1.5℃ threshold. Climate spiral. Ed Hawkins. The diminishing political and media spiral on climate. While global temperatures may be spiralling out of control, the opposite appears to be happening with the climate issue attention cycle in Australia.Apparently, climate is less important than jobs and growth – or, in Labor’s case, health and schools. A big part of this change in political climates is undoubtedly the Paris summit itself. The political triumphalism of the summit belies the scientific pessimism of so many climate scientists and activists. Kevin Anderson from Manchester University’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research even declared the summit to be “worse that Copenhagen”, in that it is based on out-of-date science, does not include aviation and shipping, and includes negative emissions in its scenarios for achieving abatement. On the other hand, after the collapse of talks at Copenhagen, some activists see no choice but to climb aboard with the Paris agreement, insofar as it at least signifies a mainstream seachange in action – even if the actual measures are inadequate. The INDCs that came out of the conference still put the world on a path to 3.5℃. Read More here
16 May 2016, Reuters, Governments seek rules for Paris climate deal; temperatures soar. Governments began work on Monday on a rule book to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming, with the United Nations urging stronger action after a string of record-smashing monthly temperatures. NASA said at the weekend that last month was the warmest April in statistics dating back to the 19th century, the seventh month in a row to break temperature records.The meeting of government experts is the first since 195 nations reached a deal in Paris in December to limit climate change by shifting from fossil fuels to green energies by 2100. It will begin to work out the detail of the plan. “The Paris Agreement represents the foundations … Now we have to raise the walls, the roof of a common home,” French Environment Minister Segolene Royal told a news conference. The agreement sets targets for shifting the world to green energies by 2100 but is vague, for instance, about how governments will report and monitor their national plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Many government delegates at the start of the May 16-26 U.N. talks, in Bonn, Germany, expressed concern about rising temperatures and extremes events such as damage to tropical coral reefs, wildfires in Canada or drought in India. “We have no other option but to accelerate” action to limit warming, Christiana Figueres, the U.N. climate chief, told a news conference, asked about the NASA data. She said record temperatures were partly caused by a natural warming effect of an El Nino weather event in the Pacific Ocean, magnified by the build-up of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. She said national promises for curbing greenhouse gases put the world on track for a rise in temperatures of between 2.5 and 3 degrees Celsius (4.5 to 5.4 Fahrenheit), well above an agreed ceiling in the Paris text of “well below” 2C (3.6F) with a target of 1.5C (2.7F). “Certainly we are not yet on the path” for the Paris temperature targets, she said. Read More here