Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, U.N. report says, but offers a path back below it

The United Nations has acknowledged that the world will soon cross the climate limit it once hoped to avoid, then urged governments to find a way back below it.

A new United Nations Environment Programme report says warming from burning coal, oil and gas will push Earth beyond the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold agreed under the 2015 Paris climate accord. The report calls for a new strategy: limit the overshoot, reach a peak and gradually cool global temperatures below the threshold.

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Humanity is speeding past the limit to avoid climate catastrophe.

That retreat would not erase the damage caused during the warmer period. The report says the world would face decades of increased weather-related disasters, rising seas, extinctions and melting ice and glaciers. “Humanity is speeding past the limit to avoid climate catastrophe,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said.

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It’s a reality check. We have to live with this warmer world.

The 1.5-degree goal became widely accepted after climate scientists found that warming of 2 degrees would produce far more severe effects for people and the planet. The world is now about 1.4 degrees above pre-industrial levels, although the measure uses a 20-year average rather than a single year.

The report says warming will cross 1.5 degrees within the next few years. Its most optimistic scenario has temperatures peaking at 1.8 degrees around mid-century if countries pursue ambitious climate goals. Current policies, however, would lead to about 2.6 degrees of warming by 2100. The proposed route back below the limit would require ending fossil fuel use and developing ways to remove industrial carbon dioxide from the air. “It’s a reality check. We have to live with this warmer world,” said co-author Richard Betts, a climate scientist at the University of Exeter. “But there’s still a lot we can do to limit warming.”

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But there’s still a lot we can do to limit warming.