The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has confirmed that it will produce a special report on the impacts of global warming averaging 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, as requested by delegates to last year’s United Nations climate summit in Paris.
The UN language in the report outline specifies a “special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.”
The outline touches on the likelihood that global greenhouse gas emissions will overshoot the 1.5°C threshold, the constraints and uncertainties surrounding greenhouse gas emissions, the mitigation and development pathways consistent with 1.5 or 2.0°C average global warming, the “technological, environmental, institutional, and socio-economic opportunities and challenges related to 1.5°C pathways,” and the “avoided impacts and reduced risks” in a 1.5°C pathway compared to 2.0°.
Agreement on the outline “means the IPCC can start work on a scientific assessment for policy-makers of what warming of 1.5ºC would mean and how we could get there,” said IPCC Vice-Chair Thelma Krug, chair of the scientific steering committee for the scoping meeting that drafted the outline.
The report is due to be published in 2018.
