When will we exceed +1.5 ° C of global warming? It is time to review the standards to evaluate whether we are adhering to the Paris agreements.
In 2015, when with Paris agreements The world established to limit global warming to a threshold well below + 2 ° C, and preferably by + 1.5 ° C compared to the pre-industrial era, the day of reaching this limit still seemed far away. After 10 years we know that it is not so: in 2024 this red line was – albeit temporarily – crossed.
The IPCC estimates involved overcoming the Paris agreements, to be calculated on the average global temperature of 20 years, between 2030 and 2035. But based on a new analysis of the Wegener Center and Institute of Physics of the University of Graz, Austria, we could Stately exceeds +1.5 ° C of global warming “already in 2028with a standard deviation interval of more/less two years “.
More precise measurements. The study, published in the scientific journal Communications Earth & Environmentis based on a new data detection system on global temperatures which is believed to have much higher reliability than those used so far, and which could provide new tools to verify how much we are in line with the objectives of the Paris agreements and to better implement them.
We were wrong (by defect). So far, to monitor the increase in the global temperature, reference was made to the temperature of the first meters of marine water recorded through driving boes, and not at the air temperature above the surface of the water. This involved a certain degree of uncertainty, that researchers from the Austrian University corrected. «The data available to us show a 6% increase in the global surface air temperature Compared to conventional monitoring »explains Gottfried Kirchergast, a climatic researcher who has signed the new job.
On the basis of this, the scientists have completed a new register of temperatures for the period 1850-2024, integrated by forecasts until 2034 and scenarios until 2050.
Attribution of responsibility. The authors of research affirm that the new reference system “allows to distinguish the increase in the temperature induced by man from specific climatic phenomena such as El Niño and other natural fluctuations, and to predict the average annual temperature of any current year, such as that of 2025”.
We specify. Scientists believe that this refining measures together with the speed with which global warming increases a basis to evaluate the compliance with the Paris agreements in a completely new way. Important for their political and legal implementation.
To complete the agreement, they propose that in addition to the objective of the heating limit at +1.5 ° C, the formula is firmly defined “well below +1.7 ° C“In place of the previous one, inaccurate” well below 2 ° C “. And to draw up an evaluation scale made up of 4 categories to judge the implementation of the Paris agreements: where are we? 1) We are adhering and we are below +1.5 ° C; 2) we are well below + 2 ° C; 3) we are dangerously close to +2 ° C; 4) We are above +2 ° C.
