Global temperature rise is set to cross 1.5°C, likely within the next few years, pushing climate risks and impacts to increasingly dangerous heights, but it is still possible to bring temperatures down and achieve global goals in the Paris Agreement, according to a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.
The report, Limiting Overshoot, identifies an ‘overshoot, peak, and decline’ pathway as the best remaining option to minimize the magnitude and duration of this overshoot and try to return to below 1.5°C as soon as possible.
“This summer’s scorching heat, raging wildfires and deadly floods are a warning of what lies ahead. We must make the overshoot above 1.5 degrees as small and short as possible. That demands an overshoot of ambition” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
This pathway would minimise peak temperature rise through immediate and sustained cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, including methane, on the road to net-zero, and bring down temperatures through long-term net-negative emissions, with carefully governed Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) – the process of removing carbon from the air and storing it through afforestation or other means – an essential part of the mix.