Target to limit global warming to 1.5°C is hanging by thread: IPCC chair

“After the IPCC special report on the 1.5 degree warming was published in 2018, I was quoted as saying that limiting warming to 1.5 °C was possible within the laws of chemistry and physics, and that is still true. But that aspiration is hanging by a slender thread,” Skea said at The Energy and Resources Institute’s (TERI) World Sustainable Development Summit. Under the Paris Climate Accords, nearly 200 countries decided to keep the increase in temperatures below 2°C above the pre-industrial levels, and preferably limit it to 1.5°C.

The three-day TERI summit, which began Wednesday, is being held days after IPCC held a crucial meeting in Hangzhou, China, to set the future course of action on producing the next set of reports on the latest state of earth’s climate. The IPCC’s synthesis report integrating the contributions of three working groups and its special report will be produced during the current seventh cycle and released in the second half of 2029.

The US did not attend the Hangzhou meet.

Skea said he will not comment on political decisions, but underlined that IPCC’s science assessment is caught in “political crosshairs”. “The IPCC is not a negotiating body but a science policy interface and we are required to not provide commentary on political matters. Although we are a science based body, the science that we assess is certainly caught in the political crosshairs,” he said.

Dwelling on the three issues of “long-term temperature goal, the goal on adaptation and resilience, and the goal on improving finance flows”, which are part of the Paris Agreement, Skea said that as per latest IPCC reports and global stocktake of climate action, the world was not on track to meet these goals. Global stocktake refers to the evaluation by countries on climate action.

The IPCC prepares crucial scientific reports on the state of the climate, which inform government policies and are also the basis for international climate negotiations.