Against the backdrop of a record year of climate change impacts such as heatwaves and droughts across the world, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began considering the critically important key findings of its Special Report entitled ‘Global Warming of 1.5°C’.
In time for this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24), to be held in Katowice, Poland in December, the special report on 1.5C was mandated by world’s governments in 2015 when they adopted the Paris Climate Change Agreement.
The Paris Agreement aims to limit the rise in average global temperatures to well below 2ºC and as close as possible to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels. Keeping average global temperature increases as low as possible is key to limiting future potentially severe climate change impacts around the world.
For the ‘Global Warming 1.5C’ report, the IPCC has therefore assessed the most up-to-date scientific findings about the damage that will be caused by a 1.5°C warming. It also compared this to the damage that would be caused by a 2°C warming.
At the week-long meeting in the Republic of Korea government, delegates will consider the key findings of the report line-by-line and adopt these as the “Summary for Policy Makers”.
The current climate change impacts which can already be observed today are the result of an approximately 1ºC global average temperature rise. Examples of extreme weather this year range from record heat in northern Europe and historic flooding in Japan, India, southeast Asia and the southeastern United States.
Representing UN Climate Change in Songdo, the Head of UNFCCC’s Adaptation Programme, Youssef Nassef, highlighted the importance of the report for the climate negotiations this year.
Current Nationally Determined Contributions, in which countries detail what they will undertake to tackle climate change, are unlikely to be ambitious enough to keep the world within the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals.
“The governments of the world are eagerly awaiting the findings you will present in the report, so that they can make informed decisions at COP24, during the Talanoa Dialogue, and beyond, through the global stock- take, which itself will also be informed by the outcomes of the Sixth Assessment Report, to be completed in 2022”, said the Head of UNFCCC’s Adaptation Programme, Youssef Nassef.
The outcomes of the meeting and the completed Summary for Policy Makers are set to be officially released at a press conference on Monday, October 8, 2018
Original source: UNFCCC
Published on 1 October 2018
