IN JUNE Christiana Figueres, the UN’s former climate chief who helped broker the Paris agreement in 2015, warned that the world has “three years to safeguard our climate”. It was a hyperbolic claim, even then. New research makes it seem even more of one today. An analysis published in Nature Geoscience on September 18th, by Richard Millar of Oxford University and his colleagues, suggests that climate researchers have been underestimating the carbon “budget” compatible with the ambitions expressed in Paris. It may be possible for the world to emit significantly more carbon dioxide in the next few decades than was previously thought, and still keep global warming “well below” a 2°C rise above pre-industrial levels, which is what the agreement requires.
It is the total amount of carbon dioxide emitted, rather than the rate at which it is emitted, which determines how much greenhouse warming the world will undergo. This allows scientists to draw up...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/2xrQPAm
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