World leaders are expected to sign a global climate treaty at a United Nations conference in Paris next month, and plans submitted so far by about 150 countries would slow the rise in temperature to about 2.7 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times, the United Nations has said.
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“There’s been an extra push from El Nino, nevertheless the fact is we have human influence driving our climate into uncharted territory, because we are now above 1C”, he said.
Global mean surface temperatures this year are set to reach one degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time, Britain’s Met Office said Monday.
The current El Nino, which is nearly certainly to be among the top three strongest events since 1950, is likely to continue into the first few months of next year which means that 2016 is also likely to be a warm year, continuing the trend of rising global average temperatures that continue to fluctuate due to natural variability, the Met Office said. The number itself has been nigh-endlessly debated, but the reasoning goes that if temps rise any more than 2˚C, we risk triggering what scientists say are “dangerous” levels climate change-think melting polar ice sheets, scorching temps, and rapidly rising sea levels that could seriously disrupt human civilization itself.
Climate change is clear in the Central England Temperature record, which is the longest in the world and stretches back to 1772, said Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading.
The Met Office said to have a two-in-chance of keeping global warming to within 2 degrees was 2900 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent.
“As the world continues to warm in the coming decades, however, we will see more and more years passing the 1 degree marker – eventually it will become the norm”, Stott said.
With 60 percent of methane emissions attributed to human activities like cattle farming and landfills, hikes in such emissions have boosted concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere to 254 percent of pre-1750 levels, WMO said.
Many of these impacts are already occurring, leading a few scientists to conclude that we’ve already exceeded critical climate thresholds.
A new report says this year could be the warmest on record across the globe.
Amount of Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during the past 800,000 years.
“We will soon be living with globally averaged Carbon dioxide levels above 400 parts per million as a permanent reality”, Jarraud said.
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Belcher said 4C of warming would be much more harmful than simply doubling the impacts expected with 2C. “The laws of physics are non-negotiable”.
