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In December 2015, representatives from 195 nations met in Paris to negotiate an international agreement to combat climate change. The resulting ‘Paris Agreement’ codified an aspiration to limit the level of global temperature rise to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels — lower than the previously generally agreed target of 2 °C. From a research standpoint, a more ambitious temperature target poses many questions that could draw scientific and intellectual attention and resources. Furthermore, the timescales in which researchers must decide how to engage with this new policy context is very short.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has agreed to publish a special report on the costs and implications of the 1.5 °C target in 2018. In order to inform that process, researchers must decide which efforts to prioritise and begin work almost immediately. But deciding what can and should be delivered is far from trivial. This evolving collection draws together content from Nature Climate Change, Nature Geoscience,Nature Communications, Nature Energy and Nature to provide comment on how research might best inform decisions about limiting climate warming as well as presenting pertinent new research that addresses this very question.
Research and debate are intensifying on complementing CO2 emissions reductions with hypothetical climate geoengineering techniques. Here, the authors assess their potentials, uncertainties and risks, and show that they cannot yet be relied on to significantly contribute to meeting the Paris Agreement temperature goals.
Action needs to be taken to limit the impacts of climate change, however, human rights and the right to development need to be preserved. This Perspective weighs the risks of action and inaction on achieving a just transition to a low-carbon world.
A review of Earth system changes associated with past warmer climates provides constraints on the environmental changes that could occur under warming of 2 °C or more over pre-industrial temperatures.
Land management with the aim of reducing incoming solar radiation could help with regional-scale climate adaptation and mitigation as well as ecosystem services, and avoids several shortcomings of global geoengineering.
Scenario analyses suggest that negative emissions technologies (NETs) are necessary to limit dangerous warming. Here the authors assess the biophysical limits to, and economic costs of, the widespread application of NETs.
This Perspective considers the potential mitigation contribution of carbon capture and utilization, such as chemical conversation or to enhance oil recovery. The authors find it will account for a small amount of the required total mitigation effort.
There are discernible differences in climate impacts between 1.5 °C and 2 °C of warming. The extent of countries' near-term mitigation ambition will determine the success of the Paris Agreement's temperature goal.
The objective of the Paris climate agreement is to limit global-average temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to further pursue limiting it to 1.5 degrees Celsius; here, the adequacy of the national plans submitted in preparation for this agreement is assessed, and it is concluded that substantial enhancement or over-delivery on these plans is required to have a reasonable chance of achieving the Paris climate objective.
A long-term goal for climate policy can only be agreed through political processes, but science can inform these through mapping policy choices and the risks they create. Recommendations for the practical use of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report are provided.