In the Paris Climate Agreement at the end of 2015, the international community set itself the goal of keeping global warming well below two degrees, but if possible limiting it to 1.5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era. However, according to numerous experts, this goal can no longer be achieved. Even if the climate could later be cooled again by removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, much of the damage caused by an “overshoot” of the global average temperature could not be repaired.
Only rapid emissions reductions can limit the risks of global warming, Austrian climate researchers emphasize in a recent study. Carl-Friedrich Schleussner and Joeri Rogelj from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg (Lower Austria) and an international team carried out model calculations of what consequences an ‘overshoot’ of climate change would have, i.e. an ‘overshoot’ of global warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius worldwide. They also investigated the likelihood that the Earth’s climate would subsequently cool down again.
Lowering temperatures may no longer be possible or at least more difficult than previously thought, the scientists report. “There is too much confidence that global warming is reversible if net zero greenhouse gas emissions are ultimately achieved,” Rogelj said at an online press conference about the study.
“There are no guarantees for technologies”
But it may also be necessary to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for this to happen. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that technologies will be developed that work on a global scale and are affordable. Such a ‘temperature excess’ would also have irreversible consequences: biodiversity could not be restored because more living things would become extinct. Sea levels continued to rise even with subsequent cooling.
The researchers reject the “idea that if the targets are exceeded, a similar climate situation could be achieved in the future as if we had done more in time to limit maximum warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.” “But the consequences of a climate change overshoot are likely to be even worse than previously thought.”
Source: Krone
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