Paris Agreement Delivers Results, But Countries Must Move ‘Much More Seriously’ on Climate Impacts: Researchers

Emission reduction pledges under the 2015 Paris climate agreement are already delivering results, but countries’ promises to date will still mean dangerous heat, severe health impacts, and widening inequality for future generations, two leading climate research agencies conclude in a report released Thursday morning.

If countries all keep their promises to date under the Paris accord, their actions will reduce average global warming this century from 4.0 to 2.6°C, World Weather Attribution and Climate Central report in a joint release. In that event, the world will still experience 57 extra days of extreme heat per year, compared to 114 at the higher level of warming.

Already this year, “the world now experiences an average of 11 more hot days per year,” the organizations state, based on 0.3°C of extra warming since 2015. The report warns that climate adaptation efforts aren’t keeping pace with the costs of inaction on extreme heat, with health, workers, and infrastructure facing increased strain, adaptation finance falling short of what’s needed, and the most vulnerable at risk of being left behind.

Despite the progress under the Paris deal—once again, assuming that countries actually keep their promises—“the expected warming this century is still far above the Paris goals of keeping warming to 1.5°C and well below 2°C,” the groups say, and “2.6°C of warming would still lead to a dangerously hot planet.”

The study includes an in-depth look at six recent heat waves in Europe, West Africa, the Amazon, Asia, Australia, and North and Central America. “These events fuelled devastating drought and bushfires, brought cities to a halt, and likely killed tens of thousands of people,” the groups said in a release.

The analysis showed that three of the six events would have been “nearly impossible” without climate change, and two of them are now about 10 times more likely to occur in 2025 than they were a decade ago.

The results show that “political leaders need to take the reason for the Paris Agreement much more seriously,” Dr. Friederike Otto, Professor in Climate Science at the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, said in a release. “It is about protecting our human rights. Every fraction of a degree of warming—whether it is 1.4, 1.5, or 1.7°C—will mean the difference between safety and suffering for millions of people.”

Despite the sobering assessment, report co-author Kristina Dahl, Climate Central’s vice president for science, said Donald Trump’s return to the White House hasn’t had much impact on countries’ willingness to keep their Paris commitments.

“Even prior to the most recent change in the administration in the United States, many countries were off track for meeting their pledged emissions reduction commitments, so it’s clear that we don’t just need more collective ambition (to limit warming to 1.5 or 2°C, for example), but more collective resolve to meet stated commitments as well,” Dahl told The Energy Mix in an email.

“While the U.S.’s actions have the potential to change the course of the country’s emissions, there is still momentum behind renewable energy globally and we still see countries submitting new climate targets,” she added. “The world is moving on from fossil fuels, with or without the US on board.”

Even before Trump’s return, projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed that global climate pollution would have to peak around this year to hold long-term warming to 1.5°C—and then only with large-scale carbon removals, Dahl said. And “the more we overshoot those temperature targets, the faster and more steeply we’ll need to reduce emissions at some point later in the century, and the more we’ll have to rely on pulling carbon pollution out of the atmosphere—something that we don’t yet know how to do at the scale that would be required.”

Cover photo:  Peter Janzen/cc0.photo