Global warming will exceed limit, UN says in a report that maps path to get back below danger zone

The United Nations has admitted that the world has lost the opportunity to prevent some of the most severe consequences of global warming. A new report warns that Earth is set to surpass the safe temperature threshold established in the 2015 Paris climate accord due to emissions from burning fossil fuels. While scientists and U.N. officials emphasize the urgent need to limit excessive warming and bring temperatures back down, they acknowledge that it will mean enduring decades of increased weather-related disasters, rising sea levels, extinctions, and melting ice and glaciers.

The report suggests that global temperatures will pass the 1.5-degree threshold within a few years, followed by a hump-shaped path of increased warming, peaking, and then gradually cooling back below the 1.5 mark, ideally by the end of the century. While the 1.5 degree target remains the ultimate goal, the report calls for a shift in approach to focus on limiting the peak temperature and minimizing the time spent above 1.5 degrees.

The report warns that the world will likely remain in this overshoot phase for many decades, with every five years of delay in reducing emissions adding at least a tenth of a degree to peak warming.