Target to limit global warming to 1.5°C is hanging by thread: IPCC chair
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.
The 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. (File Photo) The world’s aspiration to limit global warming to 1.5°C is still possible but “hanging by a slender thread”, Jim Skea, chairperson of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which assesses climate change science, said here Thursday.
Skea said that with warming having exceeded 1.5°C in 2024, the world is entering, even if temporarily, a zone with high risks of climate change. The impact could be limited by utilising available options in energy supply such as wind and solar energy and by turning to adaptation opportunities to cut risks of climate change.
“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.
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