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Interpretations of the Paris climate target

Nature Geoscience volume 11, pages 220–221 (2018)Cite this article

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To the Editor — In the 2015 UNFCCC Paris Agreement, article 2 expresses the target of “Holding the increase in global temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C … recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”1. Different interpretations of the precise meaning of the phrases ‘increase in global temperature’2 and ‘pre-industrial’3 could have large effects on mitigation requirements and corresponding social, policy and political responses. Here we suggest that levels of current global mean surface warming since pre-industrial times that are higher than those derived by Millar et al. could have been calculated using alternative, but equally valid, assumptions as the ones made by those authors.

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Fig. 1: Present global temperatures relative to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures.
Fig. 2: Global temperature for CMIP5 model simulations with RCP2.6 projections.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Crew Building, Edinburgh, UK

    A. P. Schurer, V. Scott & S. F. B. Tett

  2. Department of Chemistry, University of York, Heslington, York, UK

    K. Cowtan

  3. NCAS-Climate, Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    E. Hawkins

  4. Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science & Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania, USA

    M. E. Mann

Authors
  1. A. P. Schurer
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  2. K. Cowtan
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  3. E. Hawkins
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  4. M. E. Mann
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  5. V. Scott
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  6. S. F. B. Tett
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Correspondence to A. P. Schurer.

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Schurer, A.P., Cowtan, K., Hawkins, E. et al. Interpretations of the Paris climate target. Nature Geosci 11, 220–221 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0086-8

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