Global Warming

What's the difference between 1.5C and 2C of global warming?

The 2015 Paris Agreement commits countries to limit the global average temperature rise to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, and to aim for 1.5C.

Scientists have said crossing the 1.5C threshold risks unleashing far more severe climate change effects on people, wildlife and ecosystems.

Preventing it requires almost halving global CO2 emissions by 2030 from 2010 levels and cutting them to net-zero by 2050 - an ambitious task that scientists, financiers, negotiators and activists at COP26 are debating how to achieve and pay for.

Climate change: 'Rising chance' of exceeding 1.5C global target

It assesses a 20 percent chance the threshold will be broken in one year before 2024 and a 70 percent chance it will be broken in one or more months in those five years.

Scientists say it shows the tough task of controlling climate change levels.

The 2015 Paris accord had tasked world leaders with certain goals.

It committed them to pursue efforts to try to keep the world from warming by more than 1.5C this century.

Ocean acidification is global warming’s forgotten crisis

With record temperatures sweeping over continents year after year, it is easy to overlook that the ocean has absorbed some 90% of the heat trapped by the carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution; and how much of that CO2 has dissolved into seawater as carbonic acid, altering its basic chemistry.
 
The UN meeting follows on the heels of a new secretary general report that investigates the impacts of these changes and the findings are concerning, to say the least.
 

Great Barrier Reef survival relies on halting warming, study warns

Attempting to stop coral bleaching through any other method will not be sufficient, according to scientists.

The research, published in the journal Nature, said bleaching events should no longer be studied individually, but as threats to the reef's survival.

The bleaching - or loss of algae - in 2016 was the worst on record.

What climate change deniers, like Donald Trump, believe

He pledged to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which leading nations signed in April, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Donald Trump doesn't believe global warming is a real threat to the USA.

He tweeted his opinions on the matter in 2012 and 2014, although later denied his tweets, when challenged by Hillary Clinton.

History pact to slow global warming is celebrated in Paris

The "Paris agreement" aims to keep global temperatures from rising another degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) between now and 2100, a key demand of poor countries ravaged by rising sea levels and other effects of climate change.

Global warming passes 1 degree mark as El Nino builds

The world has warmed more than one degree since pre-industrial times, the UK Met Office has declared, passing a key milestone for the first time as the monster El Nino gave climate change a kick along.

The global mean temperature in the first nine months of the year was 1.02 degrees above the estimated level before the industrial age ramped up carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and accelerated land clearing.

Paris talks won’t hit global warming target, UN warns

The problem is that the pledges made by countries ahead of the COP21 talks on how they would reduce their emissions  “do not add up to 2 degrees,” said Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Two degrees above pre-industrial temperatures has been agreed by countries as a threshold beyond which climate change risks become unacceptably high.

Tuvalu PM set to pressure new Australian leader at United Nations

Sopoaga, who is also the chair of the Small Island States group, says Australia's approach to the forum, as well as a much-publicised climate change joke made by Australia's immigration minister, are evidence of the country's indifference towards the plight of low-lying countries.

With Malcolm Turnbull becoming the Prime Minister of Australia this week, Sopoaga is hoping change in Australia's climate stance could be on the way, and says he will make representations to the new leader to that effect next week when world leaders gather at the United Nations in New York.

Climate change refugees' plea to stay in NZ

Ioane Teitiota and Angua Erika and their three New Zealand-born children have lost claims for refugee status due to global warming.

Teitiota has been battling deportation to Kiribati since 2011, when he overstayed his visa.

He argued his family faced indirect persecution from man-made climate change, which has caused rising sea levels, contaminated water, destruction of crops, tidal surges, and extreme weather.