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Will it be possible to limit global warming to 1.5°C, the most ambitious goal of the Paris Agreement? Some doubt it, and a new scientific study conducted using artificial intelligence (AI) concludes that this threshold could be reached in barely 10 years.
To avoid the worst consequences of global climate disruption, the international community has agreed to do everything possible to avoid exceeding the +1.5°C threshold compared to the pre-industrial era. However, this commitment would require capping global greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, at the latest, and then reducing them by 43% by 2030, compared to 2019 levels.
For the moment, the efforts of the States are clearly insufficient to hope to achieve this objective, so that the bar of +1.5 ° C should be reached between 2033 and 2035, concludes a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). This new analysis adds that there is a “substantial probability” of exceeding +2°C before 2065, even if humanity managed to achieve carbon neutrality.
Artificial intelligence
To reach these findings, the American researchers used AI to establish three scenarios of temperature increases, including a so-called “central” scenario which forecasts a 1.5°C rise in the next ten years. . This has already reached +1.2°C.
In particular, the AI allowed them to combine historical data on warming and the models already available to predict the future. This method can also process large amounts of data and learn as it processes more information, which paves the way for more accurate projections.
The results of this research, which has been reviewed by renowned climatologist Michael Mann, are in line with the most recent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Limiting warming to 1.5°C is not a question of technological, financial or infrastructure limits. It is a question of political will and ambition.
In all the scenarios considered—from the most optimistic to the most pessimistic—the global temperature rises by 1.5°C or 1.6°C compared to the pre-industrial era by 2030, or even 2040. According to the most severe, i.e. those of maintaining emissions at the current rate, warming would reach a catastrophic increase of +3.6°C to +4.4°C between 2081 and 2100.
impacts
Although climate change has not yet reached the dramatic thresholds recorded in this new international scientific report, the consequences are already very real, according to the IPCC. Heat waves, heat waves and droughts are most certainly “more frequent and more intense” in most parts of the world, as are intense precipitation events.
Humanity is also responsible for the melting of the ice of Greenland and that of several glaciers on the planet. The same goes for the rise in the level of the oceans and their warming. And once warming exceeds 1.5°C, more than 90% of the world’s coral reefs are at risk of disappearing.
For the Acting Executive Director of the Climate Action Network Canada, Caroline Brouillette, the new study published in PNAS should encourage governments to redouble their efforts. “Limiting warming to 1.5°C is not about technological, financial or infrastructure limits. It is a question of political will and ambition. »
“Even if the carbon budget remaining to limit global warming to 1.5°C is dangerously reduced, the financial and societal efforts aimed at this objective will always be much more profitable than maintaining the trajectory towards reaching 2.5 °C to 2.7°C temperature increase at the end of the century that we are currently on,” adds Mme scramble.
According to the UN, warming could indeed exceed 2.5°C by the end of the century, even assuming that the 193 parties to the Paris Agreement respect their commitments. Countries are therefore invited to revise their climate ambition upwards in view of the next UN climate conference (COP28).
As part of his first international trip as president of COP28, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber called on Tuesday for substantial investment in the development of clean energy. But “the world still needs hydrocarbons and will need them to make the transition from the current energy system to the new one”, he said, echoing arguments put forward by the fossil fuel industry since the 1980s.