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Realizing the impacts of a 1.5 °C warmer world

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 735–737 (2016)Cite this article

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The academic community could make rapid progress on quantifying the impacts of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C, but a refocusing of research priorities is needed in order to provide reliable advice.

The decision on whether to increase the ambition of climate change mitigation efforts to stabilize temperatures at 1.5 °C rather than 2 °C above pre-industrial levels is arguably one of the most momentous to be made in the coming decade, and should be informed by sound scientific analysis. In its Paris Agreement of 2015, the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) invited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to prepare a special report in 2018 “on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related greenhouse gas emission pathways”. The IPCC has now accepted this. However, there is currently a paucity of scientific analysis of the relative risks associated with this outcome, particularly regarding the role of extreme weather. To inform the proposed IPCC assessment, research will therefore need to be undertaken immediately, over the period 2016 to 2017.

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Figure 1: Precipitation response to different RCPs.

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Acknowledgements

R.A.B. is supported by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme (EU/FP7) under grant agreement 603864 (HELIX) and the DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme GA01101. D.M. is supported by the ACE-Africa project, P.M.F. is supported by a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award and H.S. is supported by the Program for Risk Information on Climate Change.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK

    Daniel Mitchell, Rachel James & Myles Allen

  2. School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Piers M. Forster

  3. Met Office Hadley Centre, Fitzroy Road, Exeter, EX1 3PB, UK and the College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Hatherley Laboratories, Prince of Wales Road, Exeter, EX4 4PS, UK,

    Richard A. Betts

  4. Center for Global Environmental Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies, 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, 305-8506, Ibaraki, Japan

    Hideo Shiogama

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Correspondence to Daniel Mitchell.

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Mitchell, D., James, R., Forster, P. et al. Realizing the impacts of a 1.5 °C warmer world. Nature Clim Change 6, 735–737 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3055

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