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Climate change
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Climate change: unchecked gas emissions will make Earth 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter by 2040, experts at United Nation’s IPCC warn

  • Human activities have already caused global temperatures to increase by 1.1 degrees Celsius since 1850
  • Even if emissions are reduced, some of the changes cannot be reversed for hundreds or maybe thousands of years, IPCC report warns

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An aerial view shows a flooded road following heavy rainfall in Zhengzhou, Henan province, last month. A UN report warned that climate change will lead to more intense rainfall and flooding in many parts of the world. Photo: Reuters
Eric Ng
Global temperatures are expected to increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius or more in the next two decades from pre-industrial levels unless “immediate, rapid and large-scale” reductions in greenhouse gases are achieved, climate experts have warned.
Failure to stem the rot could render the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees by the next decades “beyond reach,” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body, said in a report on Monday. Human activities have raised temperatures by 1.1 degrees since 1850. The Paris climate agreement of 2015 seeks to limit the threshold of 1.5 to 2 degrees by 2100.
“Climate change is already affecting every region on Earth, in multiple ways,” Panmao Zhai, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group, said in a statement. “The changes we experience will increase with additional warming.”

Even if strong and sustained carbon emission reduction is achieved, it will take two to three decades for global temperatures to stabilise, and some of the impacts – such as an increase in sea level – will not be reversed for hundreds or maybe thousands of years, the report said.

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Global warming dangerously close to being out of control: US climate report

Global warming dangerously close to being out of control: US climate report
The warning comes close on the heels of extreme rainfall recorded in some cities in Henan province in central China last month, where the provincial capital Zhengzhou recorded more rain over three days than what it normally receives in a year. The disaster caused 302 deaths – including 292 in Zhengzhou – and over 114 billion yuan (US$17.6 billion) of direct economic losses.
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