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Study Warns of ‘Irreversible Impacts’ From Overshooting 1.5°C

Study Warns of ‘Irreversible Impacts’ From Overshooting 1.5°C

Published on October 10, 2024
A thermometer displaying a temperature in both Celsius and Fahrenheit against a clear blue sky and bright sunlight.

This article was authored by a 3rd party not related to PlanetVoters.com and any opinions or views expressed are not a reflection of PlanetVoters.com.


By: JESSICA CORBETT

October 9, 2024

Just over a month away from the next United Nations climate summit, a study out Wednesday warns that heating the planet beyond a key temperature threshold of the Paris agreement—even temporarily—could cause “irreversible impacts.”

The 2015 agreement aims to limit global temperature rise this century to 1.5ºC, relative to preindustrial levels.

“For years, scientists and world leaders have pinned their hopes for the future on a hazy promise—that, even if temperatures soar far above global targets, the planet can eventually be cooled back down,” The Washington Postdetailed Wednesday. “This phenomenon, known as a temperature ‘overshoot,’ has been baked into most climate models and plans for the future.”

As lead author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner said in a statement, “This paper does away with any notion that overshoot would deliver a similar climate outcome to a future in which we had done more, earlier, to ensure to limit peak warming to 1.5°C.”

“Only by doing much more in this critical decade to bring emissions down and peak temperatures as low as possible, can we effectively limit damages,” stressed Schleussner, an expert from Climate Analytics and the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis who partnered with 29 other scientists for the study.

The paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, states that “for a range of climate impacts, there is no expectation of immediate reversibility after an overshoot. This includes changes in the deep ocean, marine biogeochemistry and species abundance, land-based biomes, carbon stocks, and crop yields, but also biodiversity on land. An overshoot will also increase the probability of triggering potential Earth system tipping elements.”

“Sea levels will continue to rise for centuries to millennia even if long-term temperatures decline,” the study adds, projecting that every 100 years of overshoot could lead seas to rise nearly 16 inches by 2300, on top of more than 31 inches without overshoot.

The scientists found that “a similar pattern emerges” for the thawing of permafrost—ground that is frozen for two or more years—and northern peatland warming, which would lead to the release of planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane. They wrote that “the effect of permafrost and peatland emissions on 2300 temperatures increases by 0.02ºC per 100 years of overshoot.”

To read the full article, click here:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/climate-overshoot

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