1.5 degrees Celsius

We can keep warming below 1.5°C. But it will take a profound transformation of our societies and systems to create a better world, while avoiding climate breakdown and dangerous technologies, according to the world’s climate science body, the IPCC.

Keep temperature rise below 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels

Human activities have already caused 1°C of warming above pre-industrial levels.
Warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues at the current rate.
Current emissions put us on track for over 4 degrees C by 2100, and risks higher levels.
Warming around 3°C by 2100 is likely based on governments current pledges to cut emissions.
Under the Paris Agreement 197 countries agreed to hold warming “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.

Warming of 2°C or above is extremely dangerous

According to IPCC, more warming threatens:

Higher temperature in most land and ocean regions.
Hot extremes in most inhabited regions.
Heavy precipitation in several regions.
Drought in some regions.

The risks of abrupt or irreversible changes increase as the magnitude of warming increases.

1.5°C is dangerous, but is much less dangerous than higher levels

Climate risks are higher for 1.5°C than at present, but lower than for 2°C:

It lessens sea level rise, enabling opportunities for adaptation in small islands, coasts and deltas.
It lowers the impacts on land-based, freshwater and coastal ecosystems.
It lowers impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, including species loss and extinction.
It reduces increases in ocean temperature and acidity, and risks to marine biodiversity, fisheries, and ecosystems, and their functions and services to humans.
It limits further damage to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, and human security.
It reduces the need for adaptation, and the risks of losses and damage.

Below 1.5°C is possible, but requires radical action now to avoid reliance on dangerous technologies

Staying below 1.5°C requires rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban, infrastructure, and industrial systems.
These transitions are unprecedented in terms of scale, but not necessarily speed, and imply deep emissions reductions in all sectors.
Avoiding overshoot of 1.5°C, and reliance on future large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), can only be achieved if global CO2 emissions decline well before 2030.
It requires fundamental societal and systems transformations, and stronger capacities for climate action of national and sub-national authorities, civil society, the private sector, indigenous peoples and local communities.
Keeping warming below 1.5°C requires listening to the best united science currently available, and urgent action to ensure climate justice and equity.

For more information see:
IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C, Summary for Policymakers