World is on track for a ‘catastrophic’ rise in temperature, UN report says

The world is on track for a “catastrophic” 3.1 degrees Celsius (37.58 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming over preindustrial levels, according to the United Nations. Scientists have warned that there is no safe amount of climate change.

The international organization said that a previous goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit) – a threshold set at the 2015 Paris Agreement – will “soon be dead” without an unprecedented global mobilization to limit climate change.

The impacts of climate change are already ravaging the globe, bringing more severe wildfires and extreme heat, as well as widespread and devastating flooding.

Scientists have warned that there is no safe amount of climate change, but passing the 1.5-degree threshold would bring impacts to ecosystems that are larger than the world is willing to accept. There is a direct link between increasing emissions and increasingly frequent and intense climate disasters,” António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, said in a video. “Around the world, people are paying a terrible price. Record emissions mean record sea temperatures supercharging monster hurricanes; record heat is turning forests into tinder boxes and cities into saunas; record rains are resulting in biblical floods.”

”Nations must collectively commit to cut 42 percent off annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 57 percent by 2035 in the next round of NDCs to achieve the 1.5C goal,” the UNEP cautioned.

The deadline for countries to submit their next plans, known as nationally determined contributions or NDCs, is just a few months away and ahead of the COP30 climate talks in Brazil.. The report said they must “deliver a quantum leap in ambition.”

The publication of these findings also comes just days before the United Nations Climate Change Conference “COP29,” which will be hosted in Azerbaijan’s capital city of Baku.

While 2023 was the planet’s warmest year on record, climatologists say it is nearly certain that this year will set a new record.

“We’re being tested. The planet is testing us to see if we can explain things that we didn’t anticipate,” NASA’s chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt told The Independent on Tuesday. “And, we have not yet passed that test.”