Climate on Track to Warm by Nearly 3C without Aggressive Actions, UN Report Finds

 AES Indiana Petersburg Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant, operates in Petersburg, Ind., on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. (AP)
AES Indiana Petersburg Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant, operates in Petersburg, Ind., on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. (AP)
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Climate on Track to Warm by Nearly 3C without Aggressive Actions, UN Report Finds

 AES Indiana Petersburg Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant, operates in Petersburg, Ind., on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. (AP)
AES Indiana Petersburg Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant, operates in Petersburg, Ind., on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. (AP)

Countries' current emissions pledges to limit climate change would still put the world on track to warm by nearly 3 degrees Celsius this century, according to a United Nations analysis released Monday.

The annual Emissions Gap report, which assesses countries' promises to tackle climate change compared with what is needed, finds the world faces between 2.5C (4.5F) and 2.9C (5.2F) of warming above preindustrial levels if governments do not boost climate action.

At 3C of warming, scientists predict the world could pass several catastrophic points of no return, from the runaway melting of ice sheets to the Amazon rainforest drying out.

"Present trends are racing our planet down a dead-end 3C temperature rise," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. "The emissions gap is more like an emissions canyon."

World leaders will soon meet in Dubai for the annual UN climate summit COP28 with the aim of keeping the Paris Agreement warming target of 1.5C alive.

But the new UN report does little to inspire hope that this goal remains in reach, finding that planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions must fall by 42% by 2030 to hold warming at 1.5C (2.7F).

Even in the most optimistic emissions scenario, the chance of now limiting warming to 1.5C is just 14% — adding to a growing body of scientific evidence suggesting the goal is dead.

Global greenhouse gas emissions rose by 1.2% from 2021 to 2022, reaching a record 57.4 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent. The report assessed countries' Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which they are required to update every five years, to determine how much the world might warm if these plans were fully implemented.

It compares unconditional pledges — promises with no strings attached, which would lead to a 2.9C temperature rise — to conditional pledges that would hold warming to 2.5C.

"That is basically unchanged compared with last year's report," said Anne Olhoff, chief scientific editor of the report.

The anticipated level of warming is slightly higher than 2022 projections, which then pointed toward a rise of between 2.4C and 2.6C by 2100, because the 2023 report ran simulations on more climate models.

However, the world has made progress since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015. Warming projections based on emissions at that time "were way higher than they are now", Olhoff said.



EU Scientists: May Was World's Second-hottest on Record

FILE PHOTO: A man sits on a tangle of branches in the Sacramento River while staying cool during a heat wave in Sacramento, California, US May 30, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man sits on a tangle of branches in the Sacramento River while staying cool during a heat wave in Sacramento, California, US May 30, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo
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EU Scientists: May Was World's Second-hottest on Record

FILE PHOTO: A man sits on a tangle of branches in the Sacramento River while staying cool during a heat wave in Sacramento, California, US May 30, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A man sits on a tangle of branches in the Sacramento River while staying cool during a heat wave in Sacramento, California, US May 30, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves/File Photo

The world experienced its second-warmest May since records began this year, a month in which climate change fueled a record-breaking heatwave in Greenland, scientists said on Wednesday.

Last month was Earth's second-warmest May on record - exceeded only by May 2024 - rounding out the northern hemisphere's second-hottest March-May spring on record, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a monthly bulletin, according to Reuters.

Global surface temperatures last month averaged 1.4 degrees Celsius higher than in the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period, when humans began burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale, C3S said.

That broke a run of extraordinary heat, in which 21 of the last 22 months had an average global temperature exceeding 1.5C above pre-industrial times - although scientists warned this break was unlikely to last.

"Whilst this may offer a brief respite for the planet, we do expect the 1.5C threshold to be exceeded again in the near future due to the continued warming of the climate system," said C3S director Carlo Buontempo.

The main cause of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Last year was the planet's hottest on record.

A separate study, published by the World Weather Attribution group of climate scientists on Wednesday, found that human-caused climate change made a record-breaking heatwave in Iceland and Greenland last month about 3C hotter than it otherwise would have been - contributing to a huge additional melting of Greenland's ice sheet.

"Even cold-climate countries are experiencing unprecedented temperatures," said Sarah Kew, study co-author and researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

The global threshold of 1.5C is the limit of warming which countries vowed under the Paris climate agreement to try to prevent, to avoid the worst consequences of warming.

The world has not yet technically breached that target - which refers to an average global temperature of 1.5C over decades.

However, some scientists have said it can no longer realistically be met, and have urged governments to cut CO2 emissions faster, to limit the overshoot and the fueling of extreme weather.

C3S's records go back to 1940, and are cross-checked with global temperature records going back to 1850.