UN says global warming will cross 1.5C soon, hit at least 1.8C

Since countries signed onto the 2015 Paris Agreement, the United Nations has regularly reported on the world’s progress at limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. A landmark UN report published today brings an end to that era — and the beginning of a new one.

The world will likely surpass 1.5C in the next few years, it says, and warming will peak at around 1.8C in the best-case scenario, or at roughly 2.6C under current policies.

(Currently, long-term warming stands at 1.4C with occasional short-term spikes above that.) Since so-called “overshoot” is virtually guaranteed, the goal must become “overshoot, peak and decline” — that is, putting climate change in reverse, ideally by the end of this century.

“We are at a really critical point,” said Debra Roberts, honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and a co-author of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report, titled Limiting Overshoot. “The level of