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Citizens make their way through flooded streets with difficulty in the Dagai Mukaram Khan region, Pakistan.

State of the climate: How the world warmed in 2022

Zeke Hausfather

With a new year underway, most of the climate data for the whole of 2022 is now available. And this data shows that last year set new records for individual locations as well as the world as a whole.

Here, Carbon Brief examines the latest data across the oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere and surface temperature of the planet (see the links below to navigate between sections). This 2022 review reveals:

Ocean heat content: It was the warmest year on record for ocean heat content, which increased notably between 2021 and 2022.
Surface temperature: It was between the fifth and sixth warmest year on record for surface temperature for the world as a whole, at between 1.1C and 1.3C above pre-industrial levels across different temperature datasets. The last eight years have been the eight warmest years since records began in the mid-1800s.
A persistent triple-dip La Niña: The year ended up cooler than it would otherwise be due to persistent La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific. Carbon Brief finds that 2022 would have been the second warmest year on record after 2020 in the absence of short-term variability from El Niño and La Niña events.
Warming over land: It was the warmest year on record in 28 countries – including China, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain and the Uk – and in areas where 850 million people live.
Extreme weather: 2022 saw extreme heatwaves over Europe, China, India, Pakistan and South America, as well as catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, Brazil, West Africa and South Africa. Climate change played a clear role in increasing the severity of all of these events.
Comparison with climate model data: Observations for 2022 are close to the central estimate of climate models featured in the IPCC fifth assessment report.
Warming of the atmosphere: It was the seventh or eighth warmest year in the lower troposphere – the lowest part of the atmosphere – depending on which dataset is used. The stratosphere – in the upper atmosphere – is cooling, due in part to heat trapped in the lower atmosphere by greenhouse gases.
Sea level rise: Sea levels reached new record-highs, with notable acceleration over the past three decades.
Greenhouse gases: Concentrations reached record levels for CO2, methane and nitrous oxide.
Sea ice extent: Arctic sea ice saw its 10th lowest minimum extent on record, and was generally at the low end of the historical range for the year. Antarctic sea ice saw a new record low extent for much of 2022.
Looking ahead to 2022: Carbon Brief predicts that global average surface temperatures in 2023 are most likely to be slightly warmer than 2022, but are unlikely to set a new all-time record given lingering La Niña conditions in the first half of the year.

Record ocean heat content

Last year was the warmest on record for the heat content of the world’s oceans. Ocean heat content (OHC) has increased by around 428 zettajoules – a billion trillion joules – since the 1940s. The heat increase in 2022 alone compared to 2021 – about 11 zettajoules – is around 19 times as much as the total energy produced by all human activities on Earth in 2020 (the latest year in which global primary energy statistics are available).

Human-emitted greenhouse gases trap extra heat in the atmosphere. While some of this warms the Earth’s surface, the vast majority – around of 93% – goes into the oceans. About two thirds of this accumulates in the top 700 metres, but some also ends up in the deep oceans. Annual OHC estimates between 1950 and present for both the upper 700 metres (light blue shading) and 700-2000 metre )dark blue) depths of the ocean are shown in the figure below.

Annual global ocean heat content (in zettajoules – billion trillion joules, or 10^21 joules) for the 0-700 metre and 700-2000 metre layers. Data from Cheng et al. (2023). Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

In many ways, OHC represents a much better measure of climate change than global average surface temperatures. It is where most of the extra heat ends up and is much less variable on a year-to-year basis than surface temperatures.

Changes in the amount or rate of warming are much easier to detect in the OHC record than on the surface. For example, OHC shows little evidence of slowing down over the past eight years, despite a growing focus by climate sceptics on global surface temperature trends over that period. It also shows a distinct acceleration after 1991, matching the increased rate of greenhouse gas emissions over the past few decades.

Just about every year since 1991 has set a new OHC record, showing that heat has continued to accumulate in the Earth system as concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases have increased.

Fifth or sixth warmest year on the surface

Global surface temperatures in 2022 were among the warmest measured since records began in the mid-1800s. Data from NASA , NOAA and the Met Office Hadley Centre/University of East Anglia’s (UEA) HadCRUT5 records show that 2022 was the sixth warmest year on record, while data from Berkeley Earth , Copern i cus ERA5 , JRA-55 , and AIRS satellite data show it as the fifth warmest. In most cases differences between these group’s rankings are small and within the range of measurement uncertainty.

The figure below shows global surface temperature records from the principal research groups around the world since 1970. These are created by combining ship- and buoy-based measurements of ocean sea surface temperatures with temperature readings of the surface air temperature from weather stations on land. Temperatures are shown as anomalies relative to a 1981-2010 average; note that the 1981-2010 period is around 0.6 to 0.8C warmer than the 1880-99 pre-industrial period across the different groups.

Annual global average surface temperatures from 1970-2022. Data from NASA GISTEMP, NOAA GlobalTemp, Hadley/UEA HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth, and Carbon Brief’s raw temperature record, and Copernicus ERA5. All temperature changes are plotted with respect to a 1981-2010 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

The global warming seen is not due to any adjustments made to the underlying temperature records. The figure above includes a “raw records” line (shown as a dotted line) calculated by Carbon Brief using data not subject to any adjustments or corrections for changes in measurement techniques. These adjustments only modestly affect the record after 1950. Before then, the adjusted temperature records actually show less warming than the raw data.

Global surface temperature records can be calculated back to 1850, though some groups choose to start their records in 1880 when more data was available. Prior to 1850, records exist for some specific regions, but are not sufficiently widespread to calculate global temperatures with high accuracy (though work is ongoing to identify and digitise additional records to extend these further back in time). These longer surface temperature records are created by combining ship- and buoy-based measurements of ocean sea surface temperatures with temperature readings of the surface air temperature from weather stations on land (Copernicus ERA5 and JRA-55 are an exception, as they use weather model-based reanalysis to combine lots of different data sources over time).

The chart below shows global temperature records since 1850, with temperatures shown relative to the 1880-99 period to highlight warming since the pre-industrial period .

Same as prior figure, but with data extending back to 1850 (or as far back as each individual record is available), and using a 1880-99 baseline period. The Copernicus ERA5 is normalised to HadCRUT5 over the 1981-2010 period to estimate changes since pre-industrial). Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

Temperatures in 2022 were between 1.1C and 1.3C warmer than temperatures in the late 19th century (between 1880 and 1899), depending on the temperature record chosen. Last year represented between the eighth (NOAA and NASA) and 14th (Berkeley Earth) consecutive year that global temperatures have exceeded 1C above pre-industrial levels across the different datasets.

The past eight years of the record really stand out as much warmer than anything that has come before. This can be seen in the figure below from Berkeley Earth . Each shaded curve represents the annual average temperature for that year. The further that curve is to the right, the warmer it was.

The width of each year’s curve reflects the uncertainty in the annual temperature values (caused by factors such as changes in measurement techniques and the fact that some parts of the world have fewer measurement locations than others).

Global average surface temperatures for each year relative pre-industrial

Second warmest year on record when La Niña is removed

Year-to-year variability in temperature records is mostly due to the influence of El Niño and La Niña events , which have a short-term warming or cooling impact on the climate. Other dips are associated with large volcanic eruptions . The longer-term warming of the climate is due to increases in atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases emitted from human activity.

Last year’s temperatures were dragged down a bit by a moderately strong La Niña event during the year, which strengthened in the second half of 2022 of the year (creating a relatively rare “ triple dip ” La Niña event). Due to a lag of a few months between La Niña conditions in the Pacific and their peak effect on global temperatures, La Niña conditions – projected to persist into the first quarter of 2023 – will contribute to lower temperatures this year than would have otherwise occurred.

The figure below shows the El Niño (red shading) and La Niña (blue) conditions over the past 70 years (collectively referred to as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or “ENSO”). While not unprecedented, the extended La Niña conditions since the latter part of 2020 have extended for an unusually long period of time.

Niño3.4 sea surface temperature anomalies relative to the ocean average, for 1950-2022.

To assess the effects of El Niño and La Niña on the surface temperature record, Carbon Brief has produced an estimate of what temperatures would be in the absence of these events. The figure below shows the published Berkeley Earth temperature record compared to Carbon Brief’s estimate without El Niño or La Niña events.

Annual global average surface temperatures from Berkeley Earth, as well as Carbon Brief’s estimate of global temperatures with the effect of El Niño and La Niña (ENSO) events removed using the Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) approach. Figures are shown relative to a 1981-2010 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

Removing the effects of El Niño and La Niña from the temperature record would make 2022 the second warmest year on record. ( Dr Gavin Schmidt at NASA GISS finds a similar result ). It would also result in 2020 being the warmest year on record, rather than 2016, as 2016 temperatures were boosted by a large El Niño event.

Removing ENSO effects also results in a clear warming trend over the past eight years, showing that the apparently flat temperatures over the period is largely the result of a strong El Niño (2015 and 2016) followed by a persistent La Niña (2021 and 2022).

Once El Niño effects are removed, the cooling impact of major volcanic eruptions – such as those in 1982 and 1991 – are also much easier to spot in the temperature record.

Rapid warming for the world’s land regions

The focus on global surface temperature as a key metric of climate change is important, but it can obscure very different rates of change across the planet.

For example, while most of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans, nearly all human settlements and activities are in land areas. The land has been warming around 70% faster than the oceans – and 40% faster than the global average – in the years since 1970.

The figure below breaks down the Berkeley Earth temperature dataset into land-only (red) and ocean-only (blue) temperatures.

Land and ocean temperature rise since the pre-industrial 1850-1900 period from Berkeley Earth. Figure produced by Dr Robert Rohde.

While the world as a whole has warmed by around 1.3C since the pre-industrial period (1850-1900) in the Berkeley Earth dataset, land areas have warmed a much larger amount – by 1.8C on average. In contrast, the oceans have warmed more slowly – by around 0.8C since pre-industrial times. (See Carbon Brief ’s guest post on why the land and ocean warm at different rates.)

Different parts of the land and ocean are also warming at different rates. The warmth in 2022 covered large regions of the world, with particularly anomalously high temperatures over Europe, China, the Middle East and parts of the Arctic, and relatively cool temperatures over the tropical Pacific due to La Niña conditions. The figure below, from Berkeley Earth, shows the average annual temperatures, relative to 1951-80, across the world for the year.

Surface temperature anomalies for 2022 from Berkeley Earth. Note that Berkeley uses a 1951-80 baseline to calculate anomalies.

A year of climate extremes

In addition to being the fifth or sixth warmest year on record for the surface and setting a new record for ocean heat content, 2022 saw many climate extremes around the world. These include record-breaking extreme heat events in the UK and Europe , China, India and Pakistan and South America , and catastrophic flooding in Pakistan , Brazil , West Africa and South Africa .

In all of these cases, scientists working with the World Weather Attribution team have found that these extremes were made worse by human-driven climate change. At the same time, researchers found more limited evidence of the role of climate change in worsening droughts in both Madagascar and the Sahel region of Africa.

In 2022, 28 countries saw their warmest year on record according to Berkeley Earth . This includes Afghanistan, Andorra, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Croatia, Fiji, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Morocco, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, Tajikistan, Tonga, Tunisia and Vanuatu.

Areas home to 850 million people saw their warmest year on record during 2022, while there was no location on Earth where annual average temperatures were among the coldest on record. The figure below, also from Berkeley Earth, shows the regions of the world where either warm (red shading) or cold (blue) records were set in 2022.

Regions of the world among the five warmest (reds) of five coolest (blues) on record for average annual temperatures in 2022. Figure from Berkeley Earth.

While most of western Europe and parts of north-west Africa saw their warmest year on record, Europe as a whole only recorded its second-warmest year, slightly below the record set in 2020. However, 2022 was still nearly 2.5C warmer than pre-industrial levels for the region, as shown in the figure below.

Surface temperature anomalies for Europe between 1850 and 2022, relative to the pre-industrial period. Figure from Berkeley Earth.

The July heatwave in the UK and Europe was particularly notable, shattering records in many countries. On 19 July, UK temperatures surpassed 40C for the first time on record , reaching 40.3C. This far exceeded the previous high of 38.7C set in 2019. The figure below shows the new record at the Coningsby Royal Air Force station in Lincolnshire, compared to all the prior hourly temperature measurements at that location since 1973, and demonstrates just how anomalously warm it was.

Hourly temperature anomalies from the Coningsby RAF station in the UK, with 2022 shown in red through the date of the new 40.3C record. Figure from Berkeley Earth.

Researchers at World Weather Attribution found that the extreme heat in the UK was made at least 10 times more likely due to human-caused climate change experienced to-date.

Antarctica also experienced an exceptional climate event in early 2022. An atmospheric river on 18 March brought unusually warm air into Antarctica, and briefly pushed temperatures at the Vostok station 38.5C above the normal levels. This is likely the largest deviation above a climate normal ever recorded at a station, though there has not been any link established between this particular event and climate change.

Temperatures in-line with climate model projections

Climate models provide physics-based estimates of future warming given different assumptions about future emissions, greenhouse gas concentrations and other climate-influencing factors .

Here, Carbon Brief examines a collection of climate models – known as CMIP5 – used in the 2013 fifth assessment report (AR5) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In CMIP5, model estimates of temperatures prior to 2005 are a “hindcast” using known past climate influences, while temperatures projected after 2005 are a “forecast” based on an estimate of how things might change.

The figure below shows the range of individual CMIP5 models projections since 1950, as well as future projections through to 2100 under the middle-of-the-road RCP4.5 emissions scenario. The black line shows the average of 38 different models, while the grey area shows the 95% ( two standard deviation ) range of the model projections. Observational temperatures are plotted on top of the climate model data, with individual observational records represented by coloured lines.

Annual global average surface temperatures from CMIP5 models and observations between 1950 and 2030 (through 2022 for observations). Models use the RCP4.5 scenario after 2005. They include sea surface temperatures over oceans and surface air temperatures over land to match what is measured by observations. Anomalies plotted with respect to a 1981-2010 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

Observations fall well within the range of CMIP5 climate model projections over the past 70 years. Temperatures in 2022 are slightly below the model average (as the average of all the models effectively averages out short-term variability from El Niño and La Niña events).

The climate model outputs shown here are blended – that is, they combine surface air temperature over the land with sea surface temperatures over the ocean in the same way they are measured in the observational climate record. This allows for a more accurate comparison of the two.

The latest generation of models – CMIP6 – are not compared to observations in this state of the climate report. The most recent report from the IPCC’s sixth assessment report (AR6) has changed the way that the collection of models is used. Rather than simply taking the average of all the models (and their range) – as was the case in previous IPCC reports – the IPCC decided to use a weighted subset of models that agreed well with historical observations. This also reflected a narrowing of climate sensitivity in the most recent IPCC report – such that a number of new models fall outside the “very likely” sensitivity range.

While the IPCC AR6 provided a new set of future “assessed warming” projections, these start in the year 2015, which makes comparisons with observations over such a short period not very informative.

Warming troposphere and cooling stratosphere

In addition to surface measurements over the world’s land and oceans, satellite microwave sounding units have been providing estimates of temperatures at various layers of the atmosphere since 1979.

The lowest layer they estimate – the lower troposphere – reflects temperatures a few kilometres above the surface and shows a pattern of warming similar (though not identical) to surface temperature changes. The record produced by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) shows 2022 as the eighth warmest year on record in the lower troposphere, while the record from the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) shows it as the seventh warmest. The chart below shows the two records – RSS in red and UAH in blue – for the lower troposphere (TLT).

Global average lower-troposphere temperatures from RSS version 4 (red) and UAH version 6 (blue) for the period from 1979-2022, relative to a 1981-2010 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

The lower troposphere tends to be influenced more strongly by El Niño and La Niña events than the surface. Therefore, satellite records show correspondingly larger warming or cooling spikes during these events. This is why, for example, 1998 shows up as one of the warmest years in satellites, but not in surface records.

The two lower-tropospheric temperature records show large differences after the early 2000s. RSS shows an overall rate of warming quite similar to surface temperature records, while UAH shows considerably slower warming in recent years than has been observed on the surface. Both have seen large adjustments in recent years that have warmed RSS and cooled UAH compared to prior versions of each record.

Overall, there is more agreement with RSS to other records that include satellite data (such as reanalysis products like ERA5 and JRA-55 , as well as the shorter AIRS satellite-based surface temperature record), while the UAH record is a bit of an outlier compared to the others.

In addition to a temperature record of the lower troposphere, RSS and UAH also provide measurements of the lower stratosphere – a region of the upper atmosphere around 18km above the surface. The figure below shows lower stratospheric temperatures (TLS) records for both RSS (red) and UAH (blue) from 1979 through 2022.

Global average lower stratospheric temperatures from RSS version 4 (red) and UAH version 6 (blue) for the period from 1979-2022, relative to a 1981-2010 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

The stratosphere has been cooling for the last few decades in a clear fingerprint of human greenhouse gases, which warm the lower part of the atmosphere by trapping heat while cooling the upper atmosphere as less heat escapes. If other factors – such as changing solar output – were causing climate change, both the stratosphere and troposphere would be warming.

The lower stratosphere is affected by a number of factors in addition to greenhouse gases – including volcanic eruptions and ozone depletion. These play a smaller role in influencing the upper stratosphere, where the cooling trend due to greenhouse gases trapping heat in the lower parts of the atmosphere shows up even more clearly. This is illustrated in the chart below, which shows satellite temperature measurements at the top of the stratosphere (top line), in the upper stratosphere (middle) and lower stratosphere (bottom).

Accelerating sea level rise

Modern-day sea levels have risen to a new high, due to a combination of melting land ice (such as glaciers and ice sheets), the thermal expansion of water as it warms, and changes in land water storage . In recent years, there have been larger contributions to sea level rise from melting ice sheets and glaciers, as warmer temperatures accelerate ice sheet losses in Greenland and Antarctica .

Since the early 1990s, the increase in global sea level has been estimated using altimeter data from satellites. Earlier global sea levels have been reconstructed from a network of global tide gauge measurements. This allows researchers to estimate how sea level has changed since the late 1800s .

The chart below shows five different modern sea level rise datasets (coloured lines), along with satellite altimeter measurements from NASA satellites as assessed by the University of Colorado (in black) after 1993. (As sea level rise data has not yet been released for the whole year, the 2022 value is estimated based on data through October.)

Global average sea level rise reconstructed from tide gauge data between 1880 and 2022 from Frederikse et al 2020, Dangendorf et al 2019, Hay et al 2015, Church and White 2011, and Palmer et al 2021. Satellite altimeter data from 1993 (black) to present is taken from the University of Colorado. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

Sea levels have risen by around 0.2 metres (200mm) since 1900. While sea level rise estimates mostly agree in recent decades, larger divergences are evident before 1980. There is also evidence of accelerating sea level rise over the post-1993 period when high-quality satellite altimetry data is available. (See Carbon Brief’s explainer on how climate change is accelerating sea level rise.)

A portion of this sea level rise is being driven by melting land glaciers. Scientists measure the mass of glaciers around the world using a variety of remote-sensing techniques, as well as through GRACE measurements of the Earth’s gravitational field. The balance between snow falling on a glacier and ice loss through melting and the breaking off – or “ calving ” – of icebergs determines if glaciers grow or shrink over time.

An international consortium called the World Glacier Monitoring Service tracks 164 different glaciers in 19 different regions around the world. The figure below shows the change in global average glacier mass from 1950 through to the end of 2021 (2022 values are not yet available). Note that glacier melt is reported in metres of water equivalent , which is a measure of how much mass has been lost on average.

Global average glacier melt over the 1950-2021 period from the World Glacier Monitoring Service, in metres of water equivalent. Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

Greenland ice sheets have become a larger contributor to sea level rise in recent years due to accelerating loss of mass. The year 2022 was the 26th in a row where Greenland lost ice overall, with 84Gt of ice lost over the 12 months from September 2021 to August 2022. Greenland last saw an annual net gain of ice in 1996.

The figure below, from a study published in late 2021, shows the cumulative mass balance change – that is, the net ice loss – from Greenland between 1970 and October 2021. The different coloured lines indicate estimates from different studies. The authors find that Greenland has lost around 6 trillion metric tons of ice over that period, or more than 700 tons lost per person for every person on the planet.

Greenland cumulative mass change (left axis) and resulting sea level rise contribution (right axis)

Atmospheric greenhouse gases concentrations reach new highs

Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new high in 2022, driven by human emissions from fossil fuels, land use and agriculture.

Three greenhouse gases – CO2, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) – are responsible for the bulk of additional heat trapped by human activities. CO2 is by far the largest factor, accounting for roughly 42% of the increase in global surface temperatures since the pre-industrial era (1850-1900).

Methane accounts for 28%, while nitrous oxide accounts for around 5%. The remaining 25% comes from other factors including carbon monoxide, black carbon and halocarbons , such as CFCs.

Human emissions of greenhouse gases have increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide to their highest levels in at least a few million years – if not longer.

The figure below shows concentrations of these greenhouse gases – in parts per million (ppm) for CO2 (blue line) and parts per billion (ppb) for methane (orange) and nitrous oxide (red) – from the early 1980s through to October 2022 for CO2 and September 2022 for CH4 and N2O (the most recent data currently available).

Global concentrations of CO2, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Based on data from NOAA’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory. Note that the y-axes do not start at zero. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

Methane concentrations in particular have seen a sharp rise over the past decade after a plateau in the 2000s. This appears to be driven by both increased emissions from agriculture and fossil fuels, in roughly equal measure.

Arctic and Antarctic sea ice

Arctic sea ice was at the low end of the historical (1979-2010) range for most of 2022, but did not set any new all-time low records. The summer minimum extent – the lowest recorded level for the year – was the joint-10th smallest since records began in the late 1970s.

Antarctic sea ice, on the other hand, saw new record low levels for much of the year, including February through April, June through August, late October and December. Unlike the Arctic, the long-term trend in sea ice extent in Antarctica is less clear . There is an active debate in the community about the relative role of climate change versus natural variability in the record lows experienced over the past two years, though it is clear that warming is driving at least some of the recent decline.

The figure below shows both Arctic (red line) and Antarctic (blue line) sea ice extent for each day of the year, along with how it compares to the historical range (corresponding shading).

Arctic and Antarctic daily sea ice extent from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. The bold lines show daily 2022 values, the shaded area indicates the two standard deviation range in historical values between 1979 and 2010. The dotted black lines show the record lows for each pole. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

Looking forward to 2023 and beyond

With a “triple dip” La Niña event in the latter part of 2022, La Niña conditions are expected to persist for at least the first three months of 2023. Because there is a lag of a few months between when El Niño or La Niña conditions peak in the tropical Pacific and their impact on global temperatures, these La Niña conditions will likely have a lingering cooling influence on 2023 temperatures.

Here, Carbon Brief provides its own prediction of likely 2023 temperatures using the NASA GISTEMP dataset – and based on a model using the year, temperatures over past three months, and projections of El Niño/La Niña conditions over the next six months. The figure below shows the Carbon Brief prediction in yellow, along with its 95% confidence interval (black bars) and the historical NASA GISTEMP record (grey dots).

2023 temperature predictions from Carbon Brief, relative to pre-industrial (1880-99) temperatures, compared to historical data from NASA GISTEMP. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

While the uncertainties are still wide at this point, we find that 2023 is very likely to be between the third and ninth warmest year on record, with a best estimate of being the fifth warmest on record – similar to 2022. If an El Niño event develops in late 2023, however, it will make it likely that 2024 will set a new record.

There have been three other published predictions – from the UK Met Office , NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt and Berkeley Earth – of what temperatures might look like in 2023. The figure below shows the four different 2023 predictions compared to the NASA GISTEMP temperature record. These have been “normalised” to show 2023 warming relative to the 2001-20 period in the NASA dataset. This is to remove any differences in predictions due to divergences between datasets in earlier parts of the temperature record.

2023 temperature predictions from the UK Met Office, NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt, Berkeley Earth, and Carbon Brief relative to pre-industrial (1880-99) temperatures compared to historical data from NASA GISTEMP. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.

While the Met Office, Berkeley Earth and Carbon Brief estimates all have 2023 as similar (albeit a tad warmer) to 2022, with a relatively small chance of setting a new record, Dr Schmidt predicts that 2023 has a real chance of tying with 2016 and 2020 as the warmest year on record. It is worth noting that the Berkeley Earth projection ended up being the most accurate last year in predicting 2022 temperatures.

However, what matters for the climate is not the leaderboard of individual years. Rather, it is the long-term upward trend in global temperatures driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases . Until the world reduces emissions down to net-zero, the planet will continue to warm .

It is almost certain that the next time the world sees a moderate to strong El Niño event, that year will set a new all-time temperature record.

Similarly, as the chart below highlights, if the warming trend over the past 40 years continues, average surface temperatures are likely to pass 1.5C in the mid-2030s and 2C by around 2060.

Expected exceedance years of 1.5C and 2C

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Global Warming Essay in 150, 250, & 500 Words

Updated on
October 25, 2024

Writing an essay on global warming is essential for understanding one of the most pressing global challenges of our time. Essays are vital to academic learning and are frequently included in exams like SAT, UPSC, IELTS, and TOEFL. They help students articulate thoughts clearly and analyze societal and environmental issues. Global warming, as a topic, is of critical importance because it addresses concerns that have long-term consequences for ecosystems, weather patterns, and human life.

In this article, we’ll explore the causes, effects, and solutions to global warming and offer tips on how to write an effective essay on global warming. This guide gives students insights into the topic, helping them engage in meaningful discussions on this global issue.

This Blog Includes:

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Since the industrial and scientific revolutions, Earth’s resources have been gradually depleted. Furthermore, the start of the world’s population exponential expansion is particularly hard on the environment. Simply put, as the population’s need for consumption grows, so does the use of natural resources , as well as the waste generated by that consumption.

Climate change has been one of the most significant long-term consequences of this. Climate change is more than just the rise or fall of global temperatures; it also affects rain cycles, wind patterns, cyclone frequencies, sea levels, and other factors. It has an impact on all major life groupings on the planet.

What is Global Warming?

Before writing an Essay on Global Warming, we must understand global warming. It is the unusually rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past century, primarily due to the greenhouse gases released by people burning fossil fuels . The greenhouse gases include methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and chlorofluorocarbons. The weather prediction has been becoming more complex with every passing year, with seasons more indistinguishable, and the general temperatures hotter.

The number of hurricanes, cyclones, droughts, floods, etc., has risen steadily since the onset of the 21st century. The supervillain behind all these changes is Global Warming. The name is quite self-explanatory; it means the rise in the temperature of the Earth.

When writing an essay on global warming, knowing what causes it is important. Understanding these causes will help you write better and give useful suggestions for reducing global warming. According to recent studies, many scientists believe the following are the primary four causes of global warming:

Deforestation
Greenhouse emissions
Carbon emissions per capita

Extreme global warming is causing natural disasters , which can be seen everywhere. One of the causes of global warming is the extreme release of greenhouse gases that become trapped on the earth’s surface, causing the temperature to rise. Similarly, volcanoes contribute to global warming by spewing excessive CO 2 into the atmosphere.

The increase in population is one of the major causes of Global Warming. This increase in population also leads to increased air pollution . Automobiles emit a lot of CO 2 , which remains in the atmosphere. This increase in population is also causing deforestation, which contributes to global warming.

The earth’s surface emits energy into the atmosphere through heat, keeping the balance with the incoming energy. Global warming depletes the ozone layer, bringing about the end of the world. There is a clear indication that increased global warming will result in the extinction of all life on Earth’s surface.

Global warming significantly alters natural weather patterns, leading to unpredictable seasons and extreme weather events. Higher global temperatures contribute to severe storms, prolonged droughts, and increased frequency of wildfires. Understanding these shifts and their impact on agriculture, water supplies, and human health underscores the need for climate change mitigation strategies.

Why Urgent Action on Global Warming Is Essential for Environmental Stability

Addressing global warming is crucial to maintaining ecological balance and preventing further harm to Earth’s climate. Without action, rising temperatures lead to severe consequences such as more natural disasters, increased droughts, and displaced wildlife. Immediate steps toward sustainable energy, conservation, and pollution control can prevent irreversible damage and promote a healthier planet.

Global warming is a serious challenge, but we can slow its impact and protect the planet with collective efforts and effective strategies. Here are some key solutions to address the global warming issue, which you can mention while writing an essay on global warming.

1. Community Efforts & Activism

Activism and community involvement are crucial to slowing global warming.
Governments must develop concrete plans and step-by-step programs to prevent further environmental harm.

2. Collaboration Across All Levels

Individuals, communities, and governments must work together to find solutions.
Key focus areas include pollution control, managing population growth, and sustainable use of natural resources.

3. Reduce Plastic Use

Plastic production is a major contributor to global warming, and recycling takes years.
Reducing plastic consumption can significantly lower emissions.

4. Combat Deforestation

Planting more trees restores green spaces and helps control global warming.
Deforestation must be minimized to maintain ecological balance.

5. Regulate Industrialization

Industries should be restricted from operating in green zones to protect ecosystems.
Clear rules are needed to ensure industrial activities do not harm plants or wildlife.

Sample Essays on Global Warming

These sample essays on global warming explore its causes, impacts, and potential solutions. We offer essays on global warming in various lengths, including 150, 250, and 500 words. Take a look!

Essay on Global Warming in 150 words

Global Warming is caused by rising carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere, primarily due to human activities that have harmed the environment for centuries. The average global temperature has increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius in recent years, posing severe threats to our planet. Addressing this issue requires collective global efforts.

One effective step is to ban deforestation and promote afforestation. Planting trees near homes, offices, and public spaces can help reduce carbon dioxide levels. Participating in tree-planting events and spreading awareness about their importance can make a significant impact. While the damage already done cannot be reversed, we can take steps to prevent further harm and protect the earth for future generations.

Over a long period, it is observed that the temperature of the earth is increasing. This affected wildlife, animals, humans, and every living organism. Glaciers have been melting, and many countries have started water shortages, flooding, and erosion and all this is because of global warming.

No one can be blamed for global warming except for humans. Human activities such as gases released from power plants, transportation, and deforestation have increased gases such as carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants in the earth’s atmosphere. The main question is how to control the current situation and build a better world for future generations. It starts with little steps by every individual.

Start using cloth bags made from sustainable materials for all shopping purposes, instead of using high-watt lights, use energy-efficient bulbs, switch off the electricity, don’t waste water, abolish deforestation and encourage planting more trees. Shift energy from petroleum or other fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. Instead of throwing out the old clothes donate them to someone so that it is recycled.

Donate old books; don’t waste paper. Above all, spread awareness about global warming. Every little thing a person does towards saving the earth will contribute in big or small amounts. We must learn that 1% effort is better than no effort. Pledge to take care of Mother Nature and speak up about global warming.

Global warming isn’t a prediction, and it is happening! In the most simple terms, a person denying it or unaware of it is complicit. Do we have another planet to live on? Unfortunately, we have been bestowed with this one planet only that can sustain life, yet over the years, we have turned a blind eye to the plight it is in. Global warming is not an abstract concept but a global phenomenon occurring ever so slowly, even now. Global Warming occurs every minute, resulting in a gradual increase in the Earth’s overall climate. Brought about by greenhouse gases that trap the solar radiation in the atmosphere, global warming can change the entire map of the earth, displacing areas, flooding many countries, and destroying multiple lifeforms. Extreme weather is a direct consequence of global warming, but it is not an exhaustive consequence. There are virtually limitless effects of global warming which are all harmful to life on earth. The sea level is increasing by 0.12 inches per year worldwide. This is happening because of the melting of polar ice caps because of global warming. This has increased the frequency of floods in many lowland areas and has caused damage to coral reefs. The Arctic is one of the worst-hit areas affected by global warming. Air quality has been adversely affected, and the acidity of the seawater has also increased, causing severe damage to marine life forms. Severe natural disasters are brought about by global warming which has had dire effects on life and property. As long as mankind produces greenhouse gases, global warming will continue to accelerate. The consequences are felt at a much smaller scale which will increase to become drastic shortly. The power to save the day lies in the hands of humans, who need to seize the day. Energy consumption should be reduced on an individual basis. Fuel-efficient cars and other electronics should be encouraged to reduce the wastage of energy sources. This will also improve air quality and reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Global warming is an evil that can only be defeated when fought together. It is better late than never. If we all take steps today, we will have a much brighter future tomorrow. Global warming is the bane of our existence, and various policies have come up worldwide to fight it, but that is not enough. The actual difference is made when we work individually to fight it. Understanding its import now is crucial before it becomes an irrevocable mistake. Exterminating global warming is of utmost importance, and we are as responsible for it as the next.

Also Read: Concept of Sustainable Development

Always hear about global warming everywhere, but do we know what it is? The evil of the worst form, global warming, is a phenomenon that can affect life more fatally. Global warming refers to the increase in the earth’s temperature as a result of various human activities. The planet is gradually getting hotter and threatening the existence of lifeforms on it. Despite being relentlessly studied and researched, global warming for the majority of the population remains an abstract concept of science. It is this concept that, over the years, has culminated in making global warming a stark reality and not a concept covered in books. Global warming is not caused by one sole reason that can be curbed. Multifarious factors cause global warming, most of which are a part of an individual’s daily existence. Burning of fuels for cooking, in vehicles, and for other conventional uses, a large amount of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, amongst many others, is produced, which accelerates global warming. Rampant deforestation also results in global warming as lesser green cover results in an increased presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is a greenhouse gas. Finding a solution to global warming is of immediate importance. Global warming is a phenomenon that has to be fought unitedly. Planting more trees can be the first step that can be taken toward warding off the severe consequences of global warming. Increasing the green cover will result in regulating the carbon cycle. There should be a shift from using nonrenewable energy to renewable energy, s uch as wind or solar energy, which causes less pollution and thereby hinders the acceleration of global warming. Reducing energy needs at an individual level and not wasting energy in any form is the most important step to be taken against global warming. The warning bells are tolling to awaken us from the deep slumber of complacency we have slipped into. Humans can fight against nature, and it is high time we acknowledged that. With all our scientific progress and technological inventions, fighting off the negative effects of global warming is implausible. We have to remember that we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors but borrow it from our future generations and the responsibility lies on our shoulders to bequeath them a healthy planet for life to exist.

Digvijay Singh

Having 2+ years of experience in educational content writing, withholding a Bachelor's in Physical Education and Sports Science and a strong interest in writing educational content for students enrolled in domestic and foreign study abroad programmes. I believe in offering a distinct viewpoint to the table, to help students deal with the complexities of both domestic and foreign educational systems. Through engaging storytelling and insightful analysis, I aim to inspire my readers to embark on their educational journeys, whether abroad or at home, and to make the most of every learning opportunity that comes their way.

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The Climate Issue

Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View

By David Wallace-Wells Oct. 26, 2022

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Beyond Catastrophe A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View By David Wallace-Wells

You can never really see the future, only imagine it, then try to make sense of the new world when it arrives.

Just a few years ago, climate projections for this century looked quite apocalyptic, with most scientists warning that continuing “business as usual” would bring the world four or even five degrees Celsius of warming — a change disruptive enough to call forth not only predictions of food crises and heat stress, state conflict and economic strife, but, from some corners, warnings of civilizational collapse and even a sort of human endgame. (Perhaps you’ve had nightmares about each of these and seen premonitions of them in your newsfeed.)

Now, with the world already 1.2 degrees hotter, scientists believe that warming this century will most likely fall between two or three degrees . (A United Nations report released this week ahead of the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, confirmed that range.) A little lower is possible, with much more concerted action; a little higher, too, with slower action and bad climate luck. Those numbers may sound abstract, but what they suggest is this: Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years.

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For decades, visions of possible climate futures have been anchored by, on the one hand, Pollyanna-like faith that normality would endure, and on the other, millenarian intuitions of an ecological end of days, during which perhaps billions of lives would be devastated or destroyed. More recently, these two stories have been mapped onto climate modeling: Conventional wisdom has dictated that meeting the most ambitious goals of the Paris agreement by limiting warming to 1.5 degrees could allow for some continuing normal, but failing to take rapid action on emissions, and allowing warming above three or even four degrees, spelled doom.

Neither of those futures looks all that likely now, with the most terrifying predictions made improbable by decarbonization and the most hopeful ones practically foreclosed by tragic delay. The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse.

Over the last several months, I’ve had dozens of conversations — with climate scientists and economists and policymakers, advocates and activists and novelists and philosophers — about that new world and the ways we might conceptualize it. Perhaps the most capacious and galvanizing account is one I heard from Kate Marvel of NASA, a lead chapter author on the fifth National Climate Assessment: “The world will be what we make it.” Personally, I find myself returning to three sets of guideposts, which help map the landscape of possibility.

First, worst-case temperature scenarios that recently seemed plausible now look much less so, which is inarguably good news and, in a time of climate panic and despair, a truly underappreciated sign of genuine and world-shaping progress.

Second, and just as important, the likeliest futures still lie beyond thresholds long thought disastrous, marking a failure of global efforts to limit warming to “safe” levels. Through decades of only minimal action, we have squandered that opportunity. Perhaps even more concerning, the more we are learning about even relatively moderate levels of warming, the harsher and harder to navigate they seem. In a news release accompanying its report, the United Nations predicted that a world more than two degrees warmer would lead to “endless suffering.”

Third, humanity retains an enormous amount of control — over just how hot it will get and how much we will do to protect one another through those assaults and disruptions. Acknowledging that truly apocalyptic warming now looks considerably less likely than it did just a few years ago pulls the future out of the realm of myth and returns it to the plane of history: contested, combative, combining suffering and flourishing — though not in equal measure for every group.

The New World Take a visual tour of life after climate change .

It isn’t easy to process this picture very cleanly, in part because climate action remains an open question, in part because it is so hard to balance the scale of climate transformation against possible human response and in part because we can no longer so casually use those handy narrative anchors of apocalypse and normality. But in narrowing our range of expected climate futures, we’ve traded one set of uncertainties, about temperature rise, for another about politics and other human feedbacks. We know a lot more now about how much warming to expect, which makes it more possible to engineer a response. That response still begins with cutting emissions, but it is no longer reasonable to believe that it can end there. A politics of decarbonization is evolving into a politics beyond decarbonization, incorporating matters of adaptation and finance and justice (among other issues). If the fate of the world and the climate has long appeared to hinge on the project of decarbonization, a clearer path to two or three degrees of warming means that it also now depends on what is built on the other side. Which is to say: It depends on a new and more expansive climate politics.

“We live in a terrible world, and we live in a wonderful world,” Marvel says. “It’s a terrible world that’s more than a degree Celsius warmer. But also a wonderful world in which we have so many ways to generate electricity that are cheaper and more cost-effective and easier to deploy than I would’ve ever imagined. People are writing credible papers in scientific journals making the case that switching rapidly to renewable energy isn’t a net cost; it will be a net financial benefit,” she says with a head-shake of near-disbelief. “If you had told me five years ago that that would be the case, I would’ve thought, wow, that’s a miracle.”

How did it happen? To begin with, the world started to shift away from coal.

In 2014, the energy researcher and podcast producer Justin Ritchie was a Ph.D. student wondering why many climate models were predicting that the 21st century would look like a coal boom. Everyone knew about the decades of coal-powered economic growth in China, but those working closely on the future of energy had already grown somewhat skeptical that the same model would be deployed across the developing world — and even more skeptical that the rich nations of the world would ever return to coal in a sustained way.

But that perspective was nowhere to be seen in the huge set of models, mixing economic and demographic and material assumptions about the trajectory of the future, which climate scientists used to project impacts later this century, including for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (I.P.C.C.). The most conspicuous example was an emissions pathway called RCP8.5, which required at least a fivefold growth of coal use over the course of the 21st century. Because it was the darkest available do-nothing path, RCP8.5 was reflexively called, in the scientific literature and by journalists covering it, “business as usual.” When Ritchie and his doctoral adviser published their research in Energy Economics in 2017, they chose a leading subtitle : “Are Cases of Vastly Expanded Future Coal Combustion Still Plausible?” The world’s current path appears to offer a quite simple answer: no.

Questions about the future course of coal had been circulating for years, often raised by the same people who would point out that projections for renewable energy kept also comically underestimating the growth of wind and solar power. But to a striking degree, broad skepticism about high-end emissions scenarios has come from a small handful of people who read Ritchie’s work and took to Twitter with it: Ritchie’s sometime co-author Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies and frequent Republican witness at congressional climate hearings; the outspoken British investor Michael Liebreich, who founded a clean-energy advisory group bought by Michael Bloomberg, and who spent a good deal of 2019 yelling on social media that “RCP8.5 is bollox”; and the more mild-mannered climate scientists Zeke Hausfather and Glen Peters, who together published a 2020 comment in Nature declaring that “the ‘business as usual’ story is misleading.” (I published a piece the previous year picking up the same bread crumbs.)

Adjustments to the input assumptions of energy models are perhaps not the sexiest signs of climate action, but Hausfather estimates that about half of our perceived progress has come from revising these trajectories downward, with the other half coming from technology, markets and public policy.

Let’s take technology first. Among energy nerds, the story is well known, but almost no one outside that insular world appreciates just how drastic and rapid the cost declines of renewable technologies have been — a story almost as astonishing and perhaps as consequential as the invention within weeks and rollout within months of new mRNA vaccines to combat a global pandemic.

Since 2010, the cost of solar power and lithium-battery technology has fallen by more than 85 percent, the cost of wind power by more than 55 percent. The International Energy Agency recently predicted that solar power would become “the cheapest source of electricity in history,” and a report by Carbon Tracker found that 90 percent of the global population lives in places where new renewable power would be cheaper than new dirty power. The price of gas was under $3 per gallon in 2010, which means these decreases are the equivalent of seeing gas-station signs today advertising prices of under 50 cents a gallon.

The markets have taken notice. This year, investment in green energy surpassed that in fossil fuels, despite the scramble for gas and the “return to coal” prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. After a decade of declines, supply-chain issues have nudged up the cost of renewable manufacturing, but overall the trends are clear enough that you can read them without glasses: Globally, there are enough solar-panel factories being built to produce the necessary energy to limit warming to below two degrees, and in the United States, planned solar farms now exceed today’s total worldwide operating capacity. Liebreich has taken to speculating about a “renewable singularity,” beyond which the future of energy is utterly transformed.

The world looks almost as different for politics and policy. Five years ago, almost no one had heard of Greta Thunberg or the Fridays for Future school strikers, Extinction Rebellion or the Sunrise Movement. There wasn’t serious debate about the Green New Deal or the European Green Deal, or even whispers of Fit for 55 or the Inflation Reduction Act or the Chinese promise to peak emissions by 2030. There were climate-change skeptics in some very conspicuous positions of global power. Hardly any country in the world was talking seriously about eliminating emissions, only reducing them, and many weren’t even talking all that seriously about that. Today more than 90 percent of the world’s G.D.P. and over 80 percent of global emissions are now governed by net-zero pledges of various kinds, each promising thorough decarbonization at historically unprecedented speeds.

At this point, they are mostly paper pledges, few of them binding enough in the short term to look like real action plans rather than strategies of smiling delay. And yet it still marks a new era for climate action that a vast majority of world leaders have felt pressed to make them — by the force of protest, public anxiety and voter pressure, and increasingly by the powerful logic of national self-interest. What used to look like a moral burden is now viewed increasingly as an opportunity, so much so that it has become a source of geopolitical rivalry. As prime minister, Boris Johnson talked about making the United Kingdom the “Saudi Arabia of wind power,” and the Inflation Reduction Act was written to supercharge American competitiveness on green energy. China, which is already installing nearly as much renewable capacity as the rest of the world combined, is also manufacturing 85 percent of the world’s solar panels (and selling about half of all electric vehicles purchased worldwide). According to one recent paper on the energy transition published in Joule , a faster decarbonization path could make the world trillions of dollars richer by 2050.

You can’t take these projections to the bank. But they have already put us on a different path. The Stanford scientist Marshall Burke, who has produced some distressing research about the costs of warming — that global G.D.P. could be cut by as much as a quarter, compared with a world without climate change — says he has had to update the slides he uses to teach undergraduates, revising his expectations from just a few years ago. “The problem is a result of human choices, and our progress on it is also the result of human choices,” he says. “And those should be celebrated. It’s not yet sufficient. But it is amazing.”

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Matthew Huber of Purdue University, the climate scientist who helped introduce the idea of a temperature and humidity limit to human survival, likewise describes himself as considerably less worried than he used to be, though he believes, drawing on inferences from the deep history of the planet, that a future of two degrees warming is less likely than a world of three. “Some of my colleagues are looking at three degrees and going, oh, my God, this is the worst thing ever — we’re failing!” he says. “And then someone like me is saying, well, I used to think we were heading to five. So three looks like a win.”

A very bruising win. “The good news is we have implemented policies that are significantly bringing down the projected global average temperature change,” says the Canadian atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, a lead chapter author on several National Climate Assessments and an evangelical Christian who has gained a reputation as a sort of climate whisperer to the center-right. The bad news, she says, is that we have been “systematically underestimating the rate and magnitude of extremes.” Even if temperature rise is limited to two degrees, she says, “the extremes might be what you would have projected for four to five.”

“Things are coming through faster and more severely,” agrees the British economist Nicholas Stern, who led a major 2006 review of climate risk. In green technology, he says, “we hold the growth story of the 21st century in our hands.” But he worries about the future of the Amazon, the melting of carbon-rich permafrost in the northern latitudes and the instability of the ice sheets — each a tipping point that “could start running away from us.” “Each time you get an I.P.C.C. report, it’s still worse than you thought, even though you thought it was very bad,” he says. “The human race doesn’t, as it were, collapse at two degrees, but you probably will see a lot of death, a lot of movement of people, a lot of conflict over space and water.”

“I mean, we’re at not even one and a half now, and a third of Pakistan is underwater, right?” says the Nigerian American philosopher Olufemi O. Taiwo, who has spent much of the last few years writing about climate justice in the context of reparations for slavery and colonialism. “What we’re seeing now at less than two degrees — there’s nothing optimistic about that.”

All of which suggests an entirely different view of the near future, equally true. The world will keep warming, and the impacts will grow more punishing, even if decarbonization accelerates enough to meet the world’s most ambitious goals: nearly halving global emissions by 2030 and getting to net-zero just two decades later. “These dates — 2030, 2050 — they are meaningless,” says Gail Bradbrook, one of the British founders of Extinction Rebellion. “What matters is the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, and there is already way too much. The dates can be excuses to kick the problem into the long grass. But the important thing is that we’re doing harm, right now, and that we should stop absolutely as soon as possible with any activities that are making the situation worse.”

A lot, then, depends on perspective: The climate future looks darker than today but brighter than many expected not that long ago. The world is moving faster to decarbonize than it once seemed responsible to imagine, and yet not nearly fast enough to avert real turbulence. Even the straightest path to two degrees looks tumultuous, with disruptions from the natural world sufficient to call into question many of the social and political continuities that have been taken for granted for generations.

For me, the last few years provide arguments for both buoyant optimism and abject despair. They have made me more mindful of the inescapable challenge of uncertainty when it comes to projecting the future, and the necessity of nevertheless operating within it.

In 2017, I wrote a long and bleak magazine article about worst-case scenarios for the climate, focused on a range of possible futures that began at four degrees Celsius of warming and went up from there. In 2019, I published a book about the disruptions and transformations projected by scientists for lower but still “catastrophic” levels of warming — between two degrees and four. I was called an alarmist, and rightly so — like a growing number of people following the news, I was alarmed.

I am still. How could I not be? How could you not be? In Delhi this spring, there were 78 days when temperatures breached 100 degrees Fahrenheit, a monthslong heat event made 30 times more likely by climate change. Drought across the Northern Hemisphere was made 20 times more likely, resulting in dried-up riverbeds from the Yangtze to the Danube to the Colorado, exposing corpses dumped in Lake Mead and dinosaur footprints in Texas and live World War II munitions in Germany and a “Spanish Stonehenge” in Guadalperal, and baking crops in agricultural regions on multiple continents to the point of at least partial failure. Hundreds died of heat just in Phoenix, more than a thousand each in England and Portugal and Spain.

Monsoon flooding in Pakistan covered a third of the country for weeks, displacing tens of millions of people, destroying the country’s cotton and rice yields and producing conditions ripe for migration, conflict and infectious disease within an already struggling state — a state that has generated in its entire industrial history about the same carbon emissions as the United States belched out this year alone. In the Caribbean and the Pacific, tropical storms grew into intense cyclones in under 36 hours.

In China, there were months of intense heat for which, as one meteorologist memorably put it, “there is nothing in world climatic history which is even minimally comparable.” As it did through the pandemic, China tried to hide most of the disruptions to daily life, but industrial shutdowns meant the rest of the world felt the effects in the supply chains for semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, photovoltaic cells, iPhones and Teslas — all pinched briefly closed by warming of just 1.2 degrees.

What will the world look like at two degrees? There will be extreme weather even more intense and much more frequent. Disruption and upheaval, at some scale, at nearly every level, from the microbial to the geopolitical. Suffering and injustice for hundreds of millions of people, because the benefits of industrial activity have accumulated in parts of the world that will also be spared the worst of its consequences. Innovation, too, including down paths hard to imagine today, and some new prosperity, if less than would have been expected in the absence of warming. Normalization of larger and more costly disasters, and perhaps an exhaustion of empathy in the face of devastation in the global south, leading to the kind of sociopathic distance that enables parlor-game conversations like this one.

At two degrees, in many parts of the world, floods that used to hit once a century would come every single year , and those that came once a century would be beyond all historical experience. Wildfire risk would grow, and wildfire smoke, too. (The number of people exposed to extreme smoke days in the American West has already grown 27-fold in the last decade.) Extreme heat events could grow more than three times more likely, globally, and the effects would be uneven: In India, by the end of the century, there would be 30 times as many severe heat waves as today, according to one estimate . Ninety-three times as many people would be exposed there to dangerous heat.

This is what now counts as progress. Today, at just 1.2 degrees, the planet is already warmer than it has been in the entire history of human civilization, already beyond the range of temperatures that gave rise to everything we have ever known as a species. Passing 1.5 and then two degrees of warming will plot a course through a truly foreign climate, bringing a level of environmental disruption that scientists have called “dangerous” when they are being restrained. Island nations of the world have called it “genocide,” and African diplomats have called it “certain death.” It is that level that the world’s scientists had in mind when they warned, in the latest I.P.C.C. report , published in February, that “any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future.”

What would we get if that window closes? The temptations of apocalyptic thinking aside, it would nevertheless be a world in which we would still be living — navigating larger and more damaging climate intrusions, and doing so with some yet-to-be-determined mix of success and failure, grief and opportunity.

“The West has always had a problem with millenarianism — the fall, Christianity, all that,” says Tim Sahay, a Mumbai-born climate-policy wonk and co-founder of the new Polycrisis journal . “It’s ineradicable — all we see are the possibilities for doom and gloom.” The challenges are real and large and fall disproportionately on the developing world, he says, but they are not deterministic, or need not be. “We’re riding down the dark mountain,” he says. “That’s scary in ways, of course, but there are also so many possible outcomes. I find it all exciting. What kind of cities will Brazil build? What will Indonesia be?”

In some places, climate rhetoric has begun to soften — or perhaps it is better to say harden, with existential abstractions thickening into something more like high-stakes realism. Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of Maldives who asked, at the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, “How can you ask my country to go extinct?” has been lately talking in more practical terms. He has raised the need to secure climate finance — support from development banks and institutions of the global north to enable a green transition and local resilience — and theorized about the possible need for debt strikes to extract meaningful relief. He has also encouraged the work of scientists to genetically modify local coral to make it more resilient in the face of warming water.

Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, is fighting in the weeds with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and trying to get other vulnerable nations to play hardball too. Greta Thunberg , the unyielding face of climate alarm, recently affirmed her support for at least existing nuclear power, and Rupert Read, once the spokesman for Extinction Rebellion, has taken to calling for a “moderate flank” of the climate movement. In the United States, the climate bill that emerged finally into law was not a Green New Deal, a punitive carbon tax or a program of demand reduction but an expansive, incentive-based approach to decarbonizing that included support for nuclear power and even carbon capture, long an anathema to the climate left.

This may look like a growing consensus, which to a certain extent it is. But the world it points to is still a quite unresolved mess. Over the last year, the economic historian Adam Tooze has popularized the word “polycrisis” to describe the cascade of large-scale challenges to the basic stability and continuity of the global order. President Emmanuel Macron of France, who embodies the slim-fit optimism of neoliberalism, has declared the current period of tumult “the end of abundance.” Josep Borrell, the former head of the European Parliament, chose the phrase “radical uncertainty,” later comparing Europe to a “garden” and the rest of the world to a “jungle” and warning that “the jungle could invade the garden.” John Kerry, the American climate envoy, has acknowledged, perhaps inadvertently, that the cost of climate damage in the global south is already in the “trillions” — a number he cited not to illustrate the need for support but to explain why nations in the global north wouldn’t pay. (He added that he refused to feel guilty about it.) The author and activist Bill McKibben worries that although the transition is accelerating to once-unimaginable speeds, it still won’t come fast enough. “The danger is that you have a world that runs on sun and wind but is still an essentially broken planet.” Now the most pressing question is whether it can be fixed — whether we can manage those disruptions and protect the many millions of people who might be hurt by them.

Next month, at the United Nations climate conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, known as COP27, world leaders will take up that question, which often goes by the name “adaptation.” Having engineered global ecological disruption, can we engineer our way out of its path?

The tools are many — in fact, close to infinite. Given that most of the world’s infrastructure was built for climate conditions we have already left behind, protecting ourselves against new conditions would require something like a global construction project: defenses against flooding — both natural, like mangrove and wetland restoration, and more interventionist, like dikes and levees and sea walls and sea gates. We’ll need stronger housing codes; more resilient building materials and more weather-conscious urban planning; heat-resistant rail lines and asphalt and all other kinds of infrastructure; better forecasting and more universal warning systems; less wasteful water management, including across very large agricultural regions like the American West; cooling centers and drought-resistant crops and much more effective investments in emergency response for what Juliette Kayyem, a former official at the Department of Homeland Security, calls our new “age of disasters.”

Damage from storms is increasing, in large part because we keep building and moving right into what is often called the expanding bull’s-eye of extreme weather, with the same distressing pattern observed in boom towns along the Florida coast and in the floodplains of Bangladesh. More and more people are flocking into harm’s way, not all of them out of true ignorance.

Some more sanguine climate observers often point out that even as we put ourselves in the path of extreme weather, deaths from natural disasters are not, in fact, growing — indeed, they have fallen , by an astonishing degree, from as much as an average of 500,000 deaths each year a century ago to about 50,000 deaths each year today (even as climate- and weather-related natural disasters have increased fivefold, according to the World Meteorological Organization ).

But whether those mortality trends would continue in a two-degree world is unclear. With Hurricane Ian, for instance, a wealthy and well-prepared corner of the global north just endured its deadliest hurricane since 1935. Most of that drastic drop in disaster mortality happened, in fact, between the 1920s and the 1970s, when such deaths fell to just under 100,000. The declines have been smaller over the last 50 years, as global warming began to destabilize our weather, and even smaller — perhaps even nonexistent, depending on the data set and how you want to look at it — over the last three decades, as temperature rise became more pronounced and warming pushed the world outside the “Goldilocks” climate range that had governed all of human history.

Perhaps this means the world has harvested much of the obvious low-hanging fruit of adaptation. Better meteorology and early warning systems, for instance, which have drastically reduced the death toll of recent monsoons in Bangladesh and hurricanes in Florida, are already in place. The cost of global climate damage has already run into the trillions, and the bill for adaptation in the developing world could reach $300 billion annually by 2030. Galveston, Texas, is undertaking the construction of a $31 billion “Ike Dike” project to protect its harbor; New York City is considering a system of storm-surge gates, priced at $52 billion. In other words, warming is already making adaptation harder and more expensive, and extending the gains achieved last century into the next one may prove difficult or even impossible.

The latest I.P.C.C. report , published in February, emphasized that “progress in adaptation planning and implementation” had been made but also warned that “many initiatives prioritize immediate and near-term climate risk reduction which reduces the opportunity for transformational adaptation,” meaning that resources devoted to repair and retrofitting aren’t being spent on new infrastructure or resettlement. “Hard limits to adaptation have already been reached in some ecosystems,” the I.P.C.C. wrote, adding that “with increasing global warming, losses and damages will increase and additional natural and human systems will reach adaptation limits.”

“For me, what we are witnessing at the present level of warming, it is already challenging the limits to adaptation for humans,” says Fahad Saeed of Climate Analytics. Over the last six months, Saeed, a Pakistani scientist based in Islamabad, has watched the country endure months of extreme heat, crop failures and monsoon flooding that submerged a third of the nation, destroyed a million homes, displaced 30 million people and inflicted damage estimated at $40 billion or above — 11 percent of Pakistan’s 2021 G.D.P. “One can’t believe what would happen at 1.5 degrees,” he says. “Anything beyond that? It would even be more devastating.”

“Two degrees is a lot better than four degrees,” says the climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, one of those who delivered now-legendary warnings about the risks of warming to the U.S. Senate in 1988. “And one-and-a-half degrees is even better than two degrees. But none of those levels means there’s nothing to do.”

Oppenheimer has spent the last few years increasingly focused on the question of what to do, and how to judge our progress on adaptation. “How good are we today at dealing with the situation where hundred-year floods happen?” he asks. “Not very good.” He argues that we should try to hold ourselves to higher standards than normalizing more than a hundred deaths in a Florida hurricane. Extreme events are arriving now much more quickly, meaning that “the measure of success is no longer just how well you did in preparing for some bad event and then recovering from it. It’s also how quickly you do it.” He mentions the I.P.C.C.’s 2019 report on the oceans , which found that what were once called “hundred-year flood levels” would be reached, in many parts of the world, every single year by 2050. “And so you’ve got to get back in shape before the next one happens, when the next one might happen the same year — in the worst cases, the same month. Eventually, in some places, it happens just with the high tide.”

“You’re not going to just recover the way we think of recovery now,” Oppenheimer says. “You have to either be living in a totally different situation, which accepts something close to perpetual flooding in some places, or you fulfill the dreams some people have about adaptation, where the regularity of life is just totally different. The very structure of infrastructure and manufacturing, it’s all different.”

Talk enough about adaptation, and you drift into technical-seeming matters: Can new dikes be built, or the most vulnerable communities resettled? Can crop lands be moved, and new drought-resistant seeds developed? Can cooling infrastructure offset the risks of new heat extremes, and early warning systems protect human life from natural disaster? How much help can innovation be expected to provide in dealing with environmental challenges never seen before in human history?

But perhaps the more profound questions are about distribution: Who gets those seeds? Who manages to build those dikes? Who is exposed when they fail or go unbuilt? And what is the fate of those most frontally assaulted by warming? The political discourse orbiting these issues is known loosely as “climate justice”: To what extent will climate change harden and deepen already unconscionable levels of global inequality, and to what degree can the countries of the global south engineer and exit from the already oppressive condition that the scholar Farhana Sultana has called “climate coloniality”?

“The big thing politically that’s going to happen on a massive scale is movement,” says Taiwo, the philosopher. “The numbers I’ve seen for displacement — both internal displacement and cross-border displacement at two degrees — are at least in the tens if not the hundreds of millions. And I don’t think we have a political context for what that means.”

The range of estimates is huge, and its size is among the best indicators we have that, however much we know about the climate future, an enormous amount of the complex and cascading effects of warming remains shrouded in the inevitable uncertainty of human response. Indeed, the I.P.C.C. says that, in the near term, migration will most likely be driven more by socioeconomic conditions and governance issues. “There will be, let’s say, socioecological pressure on a scale that is an order of magnitude larger than the scale of what we’re seeing now,” Taiwo says. “Whether that translates into movement within borders and across borders, whether it translates into large-scale adaptation strategies that we don’t have a political context for, whether it translates into simply mass death we don’t have a context for, either, or some mix of those things — it’s anybody’s guess. And I wouldn’t trust a climate model to tell me which of those things, or which mix of those things, is going to happen.”

Taiwo says his mind drifts intuitively toward one scenario. “If the far right wins,” he says, “I see copycat agencies that are much like ICE operating in much of the global north and in some emerging states. I see a gradual integration of domestic policing and, for lack of a better term, border policing — which I think we’re seeing now anyway, a much more openly authoritarian development of those institutions, increasingly operating autonomously. I expect the militaries of nation states to increasingly be wedded to those operations. And I expect that to become ‘government’ for a substantial percentage of the world’s population. I likewise expect that to be a political shift that we do not have a context for.” Unless you’ve studied colonialism, he laughs.

“But maybe there’s another version of what that mix of pressures looks like at two degrees Celsius,” Taiwo says, one that produces more local resilience and sustainability, along with innovation in energy and politics, agriculture and culture. “And partially because of the success of a few of these measures,” he says, “you get markedly lower than predicted displacement numbers.”

For a generation now, climate-vulnerable countries have issued a series of variations on a simple exhortatory theme: For this damage, the rich world must pay. The call has gone by different names, each describing slightly different forms of support: “climate finance,” “loss and damage,” “reparations” and now “debt relief.” In 2009, in Copenhagen, the rich nations of the world formalized a promise to deliver $100 billion annually in climate funding to the global south, a promise that has yet to be fulfilled, even as climate-vulnerable nations have raised their request to $700 billion or more.

“It’s not only about adapting,” says the Kenyan climate activist Elizabeth Wathuti, “because you cannot ask people to adapt to losing their homes — their homes are being washed away, their livestock and their children are being carried away. They’re dying — how would they adapt to that? And crop failure — how would you adapt to that? How would you adapt to starvation? If you have not had a meal in two days, you will not adapt to that.”

“For years and years — decades and decades — people have been begging,” Taiwo says. “The deciding thing will be, what is it that global south countries are prepared to do if these demands aren’t met.”

Sahay, of the Polycrisis journal, offers one answer, describing a world in which climate-exacerbated great power rivalry means that alliances of underdeveloped states could play rich nations against one another, in a sort of spiritual extension of the Non-Aligned Movement, led by Indonesia, during the Cold War. Sahay calls the emerging nonalignment alliance built around Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) a “new bargaining chip,” floating the possibility that a new group of “electro-states” could succeed the last century’s petro-states and aggressively broker access to their own mineral resources. The scholar Thea Riofrancos has similarly imagined a “Lithium OPEC,” and though she doubts it will come entirely to pass, she believes that a harder and more nationalistic resource geopolitics surely will.

“Westerners take it for granted that people in the global south, if they’re badly hit by some climate-change event, will attack fossil fuels,” says the Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh, also the author of several piercing meditations on the injustices of warming. “But that’s a complete fantasy. In the global south, everybody understands that energy access is the difference between poverty and not poverty. Nobody sees fossil fuels as the basic problem. They see the West’s profligate use of fossil fuels as the basic problem.”

“Throughout this whole crisis in Pakistan, have you heard of anyone talking about attacking fossil fuels? No — it’s laughable to even ask. Everything I see being mentioned about Pakistan is about reparations, it’s about global inequality, it’s about historic government injustices. It’s not at all about fossil fuels. This is one of the really big divides between the global south and the global north,” Ghosh says. “If people are going to attack anything — let’s say in Pakistan or India after a heat wave or some other catastrophic event — it won’t be the fossil-fuel infrastructure. It will be the consulates of the rich countries, just as it’s been over many other things in the past.”

“We live in an unimaginable future,” says the writer Rebecca Solnit, who has grown increasingly focused on the political and social challenges of climate change. “Things thought impossible or inconceivable or unlikely not very long ago are accepted norms now.” Today, as a result, “a lot of my hope is just radical uncertainty,” she says. “You see that the world can’t go on as it is — that is true. But it doesn’t mean the world can’t go on. It means that the world will go on, not as it is but in some unimaginably transformed way.”

In 2017, looking back at decades of ineffectual organizing, I didn’t think the political mobilization of the last five years was even possible, and if you had told me then about the radical acceleration of renewable technology to come, I would’ve been more credulous but still surprised. But signs of optimism are not arguments for complacency — quite the opposite, because the new range of expectations is not just a marker of how much has changed over the last five years but of how much might over the next five, the next 25 or the next 50.

Two degrees is not inevitable; both better and worse outcomes are possible. Most recent analyses project paths forward from current policy about half a degree warmer, meaning much more must be done to meet that goal, and even more to keep the world below the two-degree threshold — as was promised under the Paris agreement. (Because of delay and inaction, even the I.P.C.C. scenario designed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees now predicts we’ll trespass it as soon as the next decade.) And because decarbonization might stall and the climate may prove more sensitive than expected, temperatures above three degrees, though less likely than they recently seemed, remain possible, too.

Overall emissions have not yet begun to decline, and it’s a long way from peak down to zero, making all these changes to expectations mostly notional, for now — a different set of lines being drawn naïvely on a whiteboard and waiting to be made real. New emissions peaks are expected both this year and next, which means that more damage is being done to the future climate of the planet right now than at any previous point in history. Things will get worse before they even stabilize.

But we are getting a clearer map of climate change, and however intimidating it looks, that new world must be made navigable — through action to limit the damage and adaptation to defend what can’t be stopped. At four degrees, the impacts of warming appeared overwhelming, but at two degrees, the impacts would not be the whole of our human fate, only the landscape on which a new future will be built.

Normalization is a form of adaptation, too, however cruel and unfortunate a form it may appear in theory or ahead of time. Indeed, already we can say a given heat wave was made 30 times more likely by climate change, or that it was a few degrees hotter than it would have been without climate change, and both would be true. We’ll be able to talk about the contributions of warming to disasters that buckle whole nations, as the recent monsoon flooding in Pakistan has, or about the human contributions to such vulnerability. And as we do today, we will often reach for the past when trying to judge the present, reckoning with how the world got where it is and who was responsible and whether the result of the fight against warming counts as progress or failure or both. History is our handiest counterfactual, however poor a standard it sets for a world that could have been much better still. “We’ve come a long way, and we’ve still got a long way to go,” says Hayhoe, the Canadian scientist, comparing the world’s progress to a long hike. “We’re halfway there. Look at the great view behind you. We actually made it up halfway, and it was a hard slog. So take a breather, pat yourself on the back, but then look up — that’s where we have to go. So let’s keep on going.”

Opening photo: With more than 3,000 turbines, the Tehachapi Pass wind farms around Mojave, Calif., are some of the largest wind-energy generators in the state.

Drone assistance for aerial photograph of solar farm by Jordan Vonderhaar.

Additional design and development by Jacky Myint.

David Wallace-Wells is a columnist for the magazine and an Opinion writer for The New York Times, as well as the author of the international best seller “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming,” published in 2019. Sign up for his Times newsletter here .

Charley Locke is a writer who often covers youth, including for The New York Times for Kids. She last wrote about the $190 billion in Covid aid that went to American schools.

Devin Oktar Yalkin is a photographer based in Los Angeles who has previously covered Joe Biden, dirt-track racing, live music and falcons for the magazine. He currently has a solo exhibition, Obsidian, at Evin Sanat Gallery in Istanbul.

Read the companion piece:

The new world envisioning life after climate change by david wallace-wells.

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the origins of the Non-Aligned Movement. It began in the early years of the Cold War, not in the last decades of the Cold War.

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misidentified plants grown by Upward Farms. They are microgreens, not sprouts.

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s prediction on warming. It predicts that warming could surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius as soon as the next decade, not 2 degrees Celsius.

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Climate F.A.Q.: Do you have questions about climate change? We’ve got answers .

America’s Insurance Crisis: As a warming planet delivers more wildfires, hurricanes and other threats, insurance companies are increasingly dropping homeowners across the United States.

A Holistic Answer to Connected Problems?: We tend to look at environmental issues in isolation. A landmark report says that tackling them as a whole would be more effective .

The Risks of Gas Exports: If the United States keeps exporting natural gas in the way that has made it the world’s biggest gas supplier, it could hurt the country’s economy and the planet , a new study warned.

Ask NYT Climate : What kind of cat litter is best for the planet? We’ve got the scoop on traditional clay box fillers and the alternatives .

What evidence exists that Earth is warming and that humans are the main cause?

We know the world is warming because people have been recording daily high and low temperatures at thousands of weather stations worldwide, over land and ocean, for many decades and, in some locations, for more than a century. When different teams of climate scientists in different agencies (e.g., NOAA and NASA) and in other countries (e.g., the U.K.’s Hadley Centre) average these data together, they all find essentially the same result: Earth’s average surface temperature has risen by about 1.8°F (1.0°C) since 1880.

Bar graph of global temperature anomalies with an overlay of a line graph of atmospheric carbon dioxide from 1850-2023

( bar chart ) Yearly temperature compared to the twentieth-century average from 1850–2023. Red bars mean warmer-than-average years; blue bars mean colder-than-average years. (line graph) Atmospheric carbon dioxide amounts: 1850-1958 from IAC , 1959-2023 from NOAA Global Monitoring Lab . NOAA Climate.gov graph, adapted from original by Dr. Howard Diamond (NOAA ARL).

In addition to our surface station data, we have many different lines of evidence that Earth is warming ( learn more ). Birds are migrating earlier, and their migration patterns are changing. Lobsters and other marine species are moving north. Plants are blooming earlier in the spring. Mountain glaciers are melting worldwide, and snow cover is declining in the Northern Hemisphere (Learn more here and here ). Greenland’s ice sheet—which holds about 8 percent of Earth’s fresh water—is melting at an accelerating rate ( learn more ). Mean global sea level is rising ( learn more ). Arctic sea ice is declining rapidly in both thickness and extent ( learn more ).

Aerial photo of glacier front with a graph overlay of Greenland ice mass over time

The Greenland Ice Sheet lost mass again in 2020, but not as much as it did 2019. Adapted from the 2020 Arctic Report Card, this graph tracks Greenland mass loss measured by NASA's GRACE satellite missions since 2002. The background photo shows a glacier calving front in western Greenland, captured from an airplane during a NASA Operation IceBridge field campaign. Full story.

We know this warming is largely caused by human activities because the key role that carbon dioxide plays in maintaining Earth’s natural greenhouse effect has been understood since the mid-1800s. Unless it is offset by some equally large cooling influence, more atmospheric carbon dioxide will lead to warmer surface temperatures. Since 1800, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from about 280 parts per million to 410 ppm in 2019. We know from both its rapid increase and its isotopic “fingerprint” that the source of this new carbon dioxide is fossil fuels, and not natural sources like forest fires, volcanoes, or outgassing from the ocean.

DIgital image of a painting of a fire burning in a coal pile in a small village

Philip James de Loutherbourg's 1801 painting, Coalbrookdale by Night , came to symbolize the start of the Industrial Revolution, when humans began to harness the power of fossil fuels—and to contribute significantly to Earth's atmospheric greenhouse gas composition. Image from Wikipedia .

Finally, no other known climate influences have changed enough to account for the observed warming trend. Taken together, these and other lines of evidence point squarely to human activities as the cause of recent global warming.

USGCRP (2017). Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume 1 [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, 470 pp, doi: 10.7930/J0J964J6 .

National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Partnership (2012): National Fish, Wildlife, and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy . Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, Council on Environmental Quality, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Washington, D.C. DOI: 10.3996/082012-FWSReport-1

IPCC (2019). Summary for Policymakers. In: IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, M. Tignor, E. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Nicolai, A. Okem, J. Petzold, B. Rama, N.M. Weyer (eds.)]. In press.

NASA JPL: "Consensus: 97% of climate scientists agree." Global Climate Change . A website at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus). (Accessed July 2013.)

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Deep warming

Even if we ‘solve’ global warming, we face an older, slower problem. waste heat could radically alter earth’s future.

by Mark Buchanan + BIO

The world will be transformed. By 2050, we will be driving electric cars and flying in aircraft running on synthetic fuels produced through solar and wind energy. New energy-efficient technologies, most likely harnessing artificial intelligence, will dominate nearly all human activities from farming to heavy industry. The fossil fuel industry will be in the final stages of a terminal decline. Nuclear fusion and other new energy sources may have become widespread. Perhaps our planet will even be orbited by massive solar arrays capturing cosmic energy from sunlight and generating seemingly endless energy for all our needs.

That is one possible future for humanity. It’s an optimistic view of how radical changes to energy production might help us slow or avoid the worst outcomes of global warming. In a report from 1965, scientists from the US government warned that our ongoing use of fossil fuels would cause global warming with potentially disastrous consequences for Earth’s climate. The report, one of the first government-produced documents to predict a major crisis caused by humanity’s large-scale activities, noted that the likely consequences would include higher global temperatures, the melting of the ice caps and rising sea levels. ‘Through his worldwide industrial civilisation,’ the report concluded, ‘Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment’ – an experiment with a highly uncertain outcome, but clear and important risks for life on Earth.

Since then, we’ve dithered and doubted and argued about what to do, but still have not managed to take serious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which continue to rise. Governments around the planet have promised to phase out emissions in the coming decades and transition to ‘green energy’. But global temperatures may be rising faster than we expected: some climate scientists worry that rapid rises could create new problems and positive feedback loops that may accelerate climate destabilisation and make parts of the world uninhabitable long before a hoped-for transition is possible.

Despite this bleak vision of the future, there are reasons for optimists to hope due to progress on cleaner sources of renewable energy, especially solar power. Around 2010, solar energy generation accounted for less than 1 per cent of the electricity generated by humanity. But experts believe that, by 2027, due to falling costs, better technology and exponential growth in new installations, solar power will become the largest global energy source for producing electricity. If progress on renewables continues, we might find a way to resolve the warming problem linked to greenhouse gas emissions. By 2050, large-scale societal and ecological changes might have helped us avoid the worst consequences of our extensive use of fossil fuels.

It’s a momentous challenge. And it won’t be easy. But this story of transformation only hints at the true depth of the future problems humanity will confront in managing our energy use and its influence over our climate.

As scientists are gradually learning, even if we solve the immediate warming problem linked to the greenhouse effect, there’s another warming problem steadily growing beneath it. Let’s call it the ‘deep warming’ problem. This deeper problem also raises Earth’s surface temperature but, unlike global warming, it has nothing to do with greenhouse gases and our use of fossil fuels. It stems directly from our use of energy in all forms and our tendency to use more energy over time – a problem created by the inevitable waste heat that is generated whenever we use energy to do something. Yes, the world may well be transformed by 2050. Carbon dioxide levels may stabilise or fall thanks to advanced AI-assisted technologies that run on energy harvested from the sun and wind. And the fossil fuel industry may be taking its last breaths. But we will still face a deeper problem. That’s because ‘deep warming’ is not created by the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It’s a problem built into our relationship with energy itself.

F inding new ways to harness more energy has been a constant theme of human development. The evolution of humanity – from early modes of hunter-gathering to farming and industry – has involved large systematic increases in our per-capita energy use. The British historian and archaeologist Ian Morris estimates, in his book Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve (2015), that early human hunter-gatherers, living more than 10,000 years ago, ‘captured’ around 5,000 kcal per person per day by consuming food, burning fuel, making clothing, building shelter, or through other activities. Later, after we turned to farming and enlisted the energies of domesticated animals, we were able to harness as much as 30,000 kcal per day. In the late 17th century , the exploitation of coal and steam power marked another leap: by 1970, the use of fossil fuels allowed humans to consume some 230,000 kcal per person per day. (When we think about humanity writ large as ‘humans’, it’s important to acknowledge that the average person in the wealthiest nations consumes up to 100 times more energy than the average person in the poorest nations.) As the global population has risen and people have invented new energy-dependent technologies, our global energy use has continued to climb.

In many respects, this is great. We can now do more with less effort and achieve things that were unimaginable to the 17th-century inventors of steam engines, let alone to our hominin ancestors. We’ve made powerful mining machines, superfast trains, lasers for use in telecommunications and brain-imaging equipment. But these creations, while helping us, are also subtly heating the planet.

All the energy we humans use – to heat our homes, run our factories, propel our automobiles and aircraft, or to run our electronics – eventually ends up as heat in the environment. In the shorter term, most of the energy we use flows directly into the environment. It gets there through hot exhaust gases, friction between tires and roads, the noises generated by powerful engines, which spread out, dissipate, and eventually end up as heat. However, a small portion of the energy we use gets stored in physical changes, such as in new steel, plastic or concrete. It’s stored in our cities and technologies. In the longer term, as these materials break down, the energy stored inside also finds its way into the environment as heat. This is a direct consequence of the well-tested principles of thermodynamics.

Waste heat will pose a problem that is every bit as serious as global warming from greenhouse gases

In the early decades of the 21st century , this heat created by simply using energy, known as ‘waste heat’, is not so serious. It’s equivalent to roughly 2 per cent of the planetary heating imbalance caused by greenhouse gases – for now. But, with the passing of time, the problem is likely to get much more serious. That’s because humans have a historical tendency to consistently discover and produce things, creating entirely new technologies and industries in the process: domesticated animals for farming; railways and automobiles; global air travel and shipping; personal computers, the internet and mobile phones. The result of such activities is that we end up using more and more energy, despite improved energy efficiency in nearly every area of technology.

During the past two centuries at least (and likely for much longer), our yearly energy use has doubled roughly every 30 to 50 years . Our energy use seems to be growing exponentially, a trend that shows every sign of continuing. We keep finding new things to do and almost everything we invent requires more and more energy: consider the enormous energy demands of cryptocurrency mining or the accelerating energy requirements of AI.

If this historical trend continues, scientists estimate waste heat will pose a problem in roughly 150-200 years that is every bit as serious as the current problem of global warming from greenhouse gases. However, deep heating will be more pernicious as we won’t be able to avoid it by merely shifting from one kind energy to another. A profound problem will loom before us: can we set strict limits on all the energy we use? Can we reign in the seemingly inexorable expansion of our activities to avoid destroying our own environment?

Deep warming is a problem hiding beneath global warming, but one that will become prominent if and when we manage to solve the more pressing issue of greenhouse gases. It remains just out of sight, which might explain why scientists only became concerned about the ‘waste heat’ problem around 15 years ago.

O ne of the first people to describe the problem is the Harvard astrophysicist Eric Chaisson, who discussed the issue of waste heat in a paper titled ‘Long-Term Global Heating from Energy Usage’ (2008). He concluded that our technological society may be facing a fundamental limit to growth due to ‘unavoidable global heating … dictated solely by the second law of thermodynamics, a biogeophysical effect often ignored when estimating future planetary warming scenarios’. When I emailed Chaisson to learn more, he told me the history of his thinking on the problem:

It was on a night flight, Paris-Boston [circa] 2006, after a UNESCO meeting on the environment when it dawned on me that the IPCC were overlooking something. While others on the plane slept, I crunched some numbers literally on the back of an envelope … and then hoped I was wrong, that is, hoped that I was incorrect in thinking that the very act of using energy heats the air, however slightly now.

The transformation of energy into heat is among the most ubiquitous processes of physics

Chaisson drafted the idea up as a paper and sent it to an academic journal. Two anonymous reviewers were eager for it to be published. ‘A third tried his damnedest to kill it,’ Chaisson said, the reviewer claiming the findings were ‘irrelevant and distracting’. After it was finally published, the paper got some traction when it was covered by a journalist and ran as a feature story on the front page of The Boston Globe . The numbers Chaisson crunched, predictions of our mounting waste heat, were even run on a supercomputer at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, by Mark Flanner, a professor of earth system science. Flanner, Chaisson suspected at the time, was likely ‘out to prove it wrong’. But, ‘after his machine crunched for many hours’, he saw the same results that Chaisson had written on the back of an envelope that night in the plane.

Around the same time, also in 2008, two engineers, Nick Cowern and Chihak Ahn, wrote a research paper entirely independent of Chaisson’s work, but with similar conclusions. This was how I first came across the problem. Cowern and Ahn’s study estimated the total amount of waste heat we’re currently releasing to the environment, and found that it is, right now, quite small. But, like Chaisson, they acknowledged that the problem would eventually become serious unless steps were taken to avoid it.

That’s some of the early history of thinking in this area. But these two papers, and a few other analyses since, point to the same unsettling conclusion: what I am calling ‘deep warming’ will be a big problem for humanity at some point in the not-too-distant future. The precise date is far from certain. It might be 150 years , or 400, or 800, but it’s in the relatively near future, not the distant future of, say, thousands or millions of years. This is our future.

T he transformation of energy into heat is among the most ubiquitous processes of physics. As cars drive down roads, trains roar along railways, planes cross the skies and industrial plants turn raw materials into refined products, energy gets turned into heat, which is the scientific word for energy stored in the disorganised motions of molecules at the microscopic level. As a plane flies from Paris to Boston, it burns fuel and thrusts hot gases into the air, generates lots of sound and stirs up contrails. These swirls of air give rise to swirls on smaller scales which in turn make smaller ones until the energy ultimately ends up lost in heat – the air is a little warmer than before, the molecules making it up moving about a little more vigorously. A similar process takes place when energy is used by the tiny electrical currents inside the microchips of computers, silently carrying out computations. Energy used always ends up as heat. Decades ago, research by the IBM physicist Rolf Landauer showed that a computation involving even a single computing bit will release a certain minimum amount of heat to the environment.

How this happens is described by the laws of thermodynamics, which were described in the mid-19th century by scientists including Sadi Carnot in France and Rudolf Clausius in Germany. Two key ‘laws’ summarise its main principles.

The first law of thermodynamics simply states that the total quantity of energy never changes but is conserved. Energy, in other words, never disappears, but only changes form. The energy initially stored in an aircraft’s fuel, for example, can be changed into the energetic motion of the plane. Turn on an electric heater, and energy initially held in electric currents gets turned into heat, which spreads into the air, walls and fabric of your house. The total energy remains the same, but it markedly changes form.

We’re generating waste heat all the time with everything we do

The second law of thermodynamics, equally important, is more subtle and states that, in natural processes, the transformation of energy always moves from more organised and useful forms to less organised and less useful forms. For an aircraft, the energy initially concentrated in jet fuel ends up dissipated in stirred-up winds, sounds and heat spread over vast areas of the atmosphere in a largely invisible way. It’s the same with the electric heater: the organised useful energy in the electric currents gets dissipated and spread into the low-grade warmth of the walls, then leaks into the outside air. Although the amount of energy remains the same, it gradually turns into less organised, less usable forms. The end point of the energy process produces waste heat. And we’re generating it all the time with everything we do.

Data on world energy consumption shows that, collectively, all humans on Earth are currently using about 170,000 terawatt-hours (TWh), which is a lot of energy in absolute terms – a terawatt-hour is the total energy consumed in one hour by any process using energy at a rate of 1 trillion watts. This huge number isn’t surprising, as it represents all the energy being used every day by the billions of cars and homes around the world, as well as by industry, farming, construction, air traffic and so on. But, in the early 21st century , the warming from this energy is still much less than the planetary heating due to greenhouse gases.

Concentrations of greenhouse gases such as CO 2 and methane are quite small, and only make a fractional difference to how much of the Sun’s energy gets trapped in the atmosphere, rather than making it back out to space. Even so, this fractional difference has a huge effect because the stream of energy arriving from the Sun to Earth is so large. Current estimates of this greenhouse energy imbalance come to around 0.87 W per square meter, which translates into a total energy figure about 50 times larger than our waste heat. That’s reassuring. But as Cowern and Ahn wrote in their 2008 paper, things aren’t likely to stay this way over time because our energy usage keeps rising. Unless, that is, we can find some radical way to break the trend of using ever more energy.

O ne common objection to the idea of the deep warming is to claim that the problem won’t really arise. ‘Don’t worry,’ someone might say, ‘with efficient technology, we’re going to find ways to stop using more energy; though we’ll end up doing more things in the future, we’ll use less energy.’ This may sound plausible at first, because we are indeed getting more efficient at using energy in most areas of technology. Our cars, appliances and laptops are all doing more with less energy. If efficiency keeps improving, perhaps we can learn to run these things with almost no energy at all? Not likely, because there are limits to energy efficiency.

Over the past few decades, the efficiency of heating in homes – including oil and gas furnaces, and boilers used to heat water – has increased from less than 50 per cent to well above 90 per cent of what is theoretically possible. That’s good news, but there’s not much more efficiency to be realised in basic heating. The efficiency of lighting has also vastly improved, with modern LED lighting turning something like 70 per cent of the applied electrical energy into light. We will gain some efficiencies as older lighting gets completely replaced by LEDs, but there’s not a lot of room left for future efficiency improvements. Similar efficiency limits arise in the growing or cooking of food; in the manufacturing of cars, bikes and electronic devices; in transportation, as we’re taken from place to place; in the running of search engines, translation software, GPT-4 or other large-language models.

Even if we made significant improvements in the efficiencies of these technologies, we will only have bought a little time. These changes won’t delay by much the date when deep warming becomes a problem we must reckon with.

Optimising efficiencies is just a temporary reprieve, not a radical change in our human future

As a thought experiment, suppose we could immediately improve the energy efficiency of everything we do by a factor of 10 – a fantastically optimistic proposal. That is, imagine the energy output of humans on Earth has been reduced 10 times , from 170,000 TWh to 17,000 TWh . If our energy use keeps expanding, doubling every 30-50 years or so (as it has for centuries), then a 10-fold increase in waste heat will happen in just over three doubling times, which is about 130 years : 17,000 TWh doubles to 34,000 TWh , which doubles to 68,000 TWh , which doubles to 136,000 TWh , and so on. All those improvements in energy efficiency would quickly evaporate. The date when deep warming hits would recede by 130 years or so, but not much more. Optimising efficiencies is just a temporary reprieve, not a radical change in our human future.

Improvements in energy efficiency can also have an inverse effect on our overall energy use. It’s easy to think that if we make a technology more efficient, we’ll then use less energy through the technology. But economists are deeply aware of a paradoxical effect known as ‘rebound’, whereby improved energy efficiency, by making the use of a technology cheaper, actually leads to more widespread use of that technology – and more energy use too. The classic example, as noted by the British economist William Stanley Jevons in his book The Coal Question (1865), is the invention of the steam engine. This new technology could extract energy from burning coal more efficiently, but it also made possible so many new applications that the use of coal increased. A recent study by economists suggests that, across the economy, such rebound effects might easily swallow at least 50 per cent of any efficiency gains in energy use. Something similar has already happened with LED lights, for which people have found thousands of new uses.

If gains in efficiency won’t buy us lots of time, how about other factors, such as a reduction of the global population? Scientists generally believe that the current human population of more than 8 billion people is well beyond the limits of our finite planet, especially if a large fraction of this population aspires to the resource-intensive lifestyles of wealthy nations. Some estimates suggest that a more sustainable population might be more like 2 billion , which could reduce energy use significantly, potentially by a factor of three or four. However, this isn’t a real solution: again, as with the example of improved energy efficiency, a one-time reduction of our energy consumption by a factor of three will quickly be swallowed up by an inexorable rise in energy use. If Earth’s population were suddenly reduced to 2 billion – about a quarter of the current population – our energy gains would initially be enormous. But those gains would be erased in two doubling times, or roughly 60-100 years , as our energy demands would grow fourfold.

S o, why aren’t more people talking about this? The deep warming problem is starting to get more attention. It was recently mentioned on Twitter by the German climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, who cautioned that nuclear fusion, despite excitement over recent advances, won’t arrive in time to save us from our waste heat, and might make the problem worse. By providing another cheap source of energy, fusion energy could accelerate both the growth of our energy use and the reckoning of deep warming. A student of Rahmstorf’s, Peter Steiglechner, wrote his master’s thesis on the problem in 2018. Recognition of deep warming and its long-term implications for humanity is spreading. But what can we do about the problem?

Avoiding or delaying deep warming will involve slowing the rise of our waste heat, which means restricting the amount of energy we use and also choosing energy sources that exacerbate the problem as little as possible. Unlike the energy from fossil fuels or nuclear power, which add to our waste energy burden, renewable energy sources intercept energy that is already on its way to Earth, rather than producing additional waste heat. In this sense, the deep warming problem is another reason to pursue renewable energy sources such as solar or wind rather than alternatives such as nuclear fusion, fission or even geothermal power. If we derive energy from any of these sources, we’re unleashing new flows of energy into the Earth system without making a compensating reduction. As a result, all such sources will add to the waste heat problem. However, if renewable sources of energy are deployed correctly, they need not add to our deposition of waste heat in the environment. By using this energy, we produce no more waste heat than would have been created by sunlight in the first place.

Take the example of wind energy. Sunlight first stirs winds into motion by heating parts of the planet unequally, causing vast cells of convection. As wind churns through the atmosphere, blows through trees and over mountains and waves, most of its energy gets turned into heat, ending up in the microscopic motions of molecules. If we harvest some of this wind energy through turbines, it will also be turned into heat in the form of stored energy. But, crucially, no more heat is generated than if there had been no turbines to capture the wind.

The same can hold true for solar energy. In an array of solar cells, if each cell only collects the sunlight falling on it – which would ordinarily have been absorbed by Earth’s surface – then the cells don’t alter how much waste heat gets produced as they generate energy. The light that would have warmed Earth’s surface instead goes into the solar cells, gets used by people for some purpose, and then later ends up as heat. In this way we reduce the amount of heat being absorbed by Earth by precisely the same amount as the energy we are extracting for human use. We are not adding to overall planetary heating. This keeps the waste energy burden unchanged, at least in the relatively near future, even if we go on extracting and using ever larger amounts of energy.

Covering deserts in dark panels would absorb a lot more energy than the desert floor

Chaisson summarised the problem quite clearly in 2008:

I’m now of the opinion … that any energy that’s dug up on Earth – including all fossil fuels of course, but also nuclear and ground-sourced geothermal – will inevitably produce waste heat as a byproduct of humankind’s use of energy. The only exception to that is energy arriving from beyond Earth, this is energy here and now and not dug up, namely the many solar energies (plural) caused by the Sun’s rays landing here daily … The need to avoid waste heat is indeed the single, strongest, scientific argument to embrace solar energies of all types.

But not just any method of gathering solar energy will avoid the deep warming problem. Doing so requires careful engineering. For example, covering deserts with solar panels would add to planetary heating because deserts reflect a lot of incident light back out to space, so it is never absorbed by Earth (and therefore doesn’t produce waste heat). Covering deserts in dark panels would absorb a lot more energy than the desert floor and would heat the planet further.

We’ll also face serious problems in the long run if our energy appetite keeps increasing. Futurists dream of technologies deployed in space where huge panels would absorb sunlight that would otherwise have passed by Earth and never entered our atmosphere. Ultimately, they believe, this energy could be beamed down to Earth. Like nuclear energy, such technologies would add an additional energy source to the planet without any compensating removal of heating from the sunlight currently striking our planet’s surface. Any effort to produce more energy than is normally available from sunlight at Earth’s surface will only make our heating problems worse.

D eep warming is simply a consequence of the laws of physics and our inquisitive nature. It seems to be in our nature to constantly learn and develop new things, changing our environment in the process. For thousands of years, we have harvested and exploited ever greater quantities of energy in this pursuit, and we appear poised to continue along this path with the rapidly expanding use of renewable energy sources – and perhaps even more novel sources such as nuclear fusion. But this path cannot proceed indefinitely without consequences.

The logic that more energy equals more warming sets up a profound dilemma for our future. The laws of physics and the habits ingrained in us from our long evolutionary history are steering us toward trouble. We may have a technological fix for greenhouse gas warming – just shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources – but there is no technical trick to get us out of the deep warming problem. That won’t stop some scientists from trying.

Perhaps, believing that humanity is incapable of reducing its energy usage, we’ll adopt a fantastic scheme to cool the planet, such as planetary-scale refrigeration or using artificially engineered tornadoes to transport heat from Earth’s surface to the upper atmosphere where it can be radiated away to space. As far-fetched as such approaches sound, scientists have given some serious thought to these and other equally bizarre ideas, which seem wholly in the realm of science fiction. They’re schemes that will likely make the problem worse not better.

We will need to transform the human story. It must become a story of doing less, not more

I see several possibilities for how we might ultimately respond. As with greenhouse gas warming, there will probably be an initial period of disbelief, denial and inaction, as we continue with unconstrained technological advance and growing energy use. Our planet will continue warming. Sooner or later, however, such warming will lead to serious disruptions of the Earth environment and its ecosystems. We won’t be able to ignore this for long, and it may provide a natural counterbalance to our energy use, as our technical and social capacity to generate and use ever more energy will be eroded. We may eventually come to some uncomfortable balance in which we just scrabble out a life on a hot, compromised planet because we lack the moral and organisational ability to restrict our energy use enough to maintain a sound environment.

An alternative would require a radical break with our past: using less energy. Finding a way to use less energy would represent a truly fundamental rupture with all of human history, something entirely novel. A rupture of this magnitude won’t come easily. However, if we could learn to view restrictions on our energy use as a non-negotiable element of life on Earth, we may still be able to do many of the things that make us essentially human: learning, discovering, inventing, creating. In this scenario, any helpful new technology that comes into use and begins using lots of energy would require a balancing reduction in energy use elsewhere. In such a way, we might go on with the future being perpetually new, and possibly better.

None of this is easily achieved and will likely mirror our current struggles to come to agreements on greenhouse gas heating. There will be vicious squabbles, arguments and profound polarisation, quite possibly major wars. Humanity will never have faced a challenge of this magnitude, and we won’t face up to it quickly or easily, I expect. But we must. Planetary heating is in our future – the very near future and further out as well. Many people will find this conclusion surprisingly hard to swallow, perhaps because it implies fundamental restrictions on our future here on Earth: we can’t go on forever using more and more energy, and, at the same time, expecting the planet’s climate to remain stable.

The world will likely be transformed by 2050. And, sometime after that, we will need to transform the human story. The narrative arc of humanity must become a tale of continuing innovation and learning, but also one of careful management. It must become a story, in energy terms, of doing less, not more. There’s no technology for entirely escaping waste heat, only techniques.

This is important to remember as we face up to the extremely urgent challenge of heating linked to fossil-fuel use and greenhouse gases. Global warming is just the beginning of our problems. It’s a testing ground to see if we can manage an intelligent and coordinated response. If we can handle this challenge, we might be better prepared, more capable and resilient as a species to tackle an even harder one.

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UN climate report: It’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees

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A new flagship UN report on climate change out Monday indicating that harmful carbon emissions from 2010-2019 have never been higher in human history, is proof that the world is on a “fast track” to disaster, António Guterres has warned , with scientists arguing that it’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

Reacting to the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ), the UN Secretary-General insisted that unless governments everywhere reassess their energy policies, the world will be uninhabitable.

His comments reflected the IPCC’s insistence that all countries must reduce their fossil fuel use substantially, extend access to electricity, improve energy efficiency and increase the use of alternative fuels, such as hydrogen.

Unless action is taken soon, some major cities will be under water, Mr. Guterres said in a video message, which also forecast “unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages and the extinction of a million species of plants and animals”.

Horror story

The UN chief added: “This is not fiction or exaggeration. It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies. We are on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree (Celsius, or 2.7-degrees Fahreinheit) limit ” that was agreed in Paris in 2015.

Providing the scientific proof to back up that damning assessment, the IPCC report – written by hundreds of leading scientists and agreed by 195 countries - noted that greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity, have increased since 2010 “across all major sectors globally”.

In an op-ed article penned for the Washington Post, Mr. Guterres described the latest IPCC report as "a litany of broken climate promises ", which revealed a "yawning gap between climate pledges, and reality."

He wrote that high-emitting governments and corporations, were not just turning a blind eye, "they are adding fuel to the flames by continuing to invest in climate-choking industries. Scientists warn that we are already perilously close to tipping points that could lead to cascading and irreversible climate effects."

Urban issue

An increasing share of emissions can be attributed to towns and cities , the report’s authors continued, adding just as worryingly, that emissions reductions clawed back in the last decade or so “have been less than emissions increases, from rising global activity levels in industry, energy supply, transport, agriculture and buildings”.

Striking a more positive note - and insisting that it is still possible to halve emissions by 2030 - the IPCC urged governments to ramp up action to curb emissions.

The UN body also welcomed the significant decrease in the cost of renewable energy sources since 2010, by as much as 85 per cent for solar and wind energy, and batteries.

Global net anthropogenic emissions have continued to rise across all major groups of greenhouse gases.

Encouraging climate action

“We are at a crossroads. The decisions we make now can secure a liveable future,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee. “ I am encouraged by climate action being taken in many countries . There are policies, regulations and market instruments that are proving effective. If these are scaled up and applied more widely and equitably, they can support deep emissions reductions and stimulate innovation.”

To limit global warming to around 1.5C (2.7°F), the IPCC report insisted that global greenhouse gas emissions would have to peak “before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43 per cent by 2030”.

Methane would also need to be reduced by about a third, the report’s authors continued, adding that even if this was achieved, it was “almost inevitable that we will temporarily exceed this temperature threshold”, although the world “could return to below it by the end of the century”.

Now or never

“ It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F); without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible ,” said Jim Skea, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III, which released the latest report.

Global temperatures will stabilise when carbon dioxide emissions reach net zero. For 1.5C (2.7F), this means achieving net zero carbon dioxide emissions globally in the early 2050s; for 2C (3.6°F), it is in the early 2070s, the IPCC report states.

“This assessment shows that limiting warming to around 2C (3.6F) still requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by a quarter by 2030.”

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Policy base

A great deal of importance is attached to IPCC assessments because they provide governments with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies.

They also play a key role in international negotiations to tackle climate change.

Among the sustainable and emissions-busting solutions that are available to governments, the IPCC report emphasised that rethinking how cities and other urban areas function in future could help significantly in mitigating the worst effects of climate change.

“These (reductions) can be achieved through lower energy consumption (such as by creating compact, walkable cities), electrification of transport in combination with low-emission energy sources, and enhanced carbon uptake and storage using nature,” the report suggested. “There are options for established, rapidly growing and new cities,” it said.

Echoing that message, IPCC Working Group III Co-Chair, Priyadarshi Shukla, insisted that “the right policies, infrastructure and technology…to enable changes to our lifestyles and behaviour, can result in a 40 to 70 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. “The evidence also shows that these lifestyle changes can improve our health and wellbeing.”

A cow trying to leave an area affected by intense flooding, South Sudan.

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