Earth could break through major climate threshold by 2032, scientists warn

Global temperatures could exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above their preindustrial levels within the next 15 years, according to a new scientific study, crossing the first threshold under the Paris climate agreement and placing the world at a potentially dangerous level of climate change.

The report comes as climate agreement participants are watching the United States, where the Trump administration is debating whether to withdraw from the Paris accord and as scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are working on a special report about the 1.5-degree goal (equivalent to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and the consequences of overshooting it.

That IPCC’s upcoming special report and the increasing urgency about minimising global warming were one impetus for the study, according to co-author Benjamin Henley, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia. “We are working on a number of scientific avenues to help inform that report,” he told The Washington Post.

The study focuses on a natural planetary system known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, or IPO. It is an alternating pattern of ocean temperatures that shifts periodically between warm and cool phases, helping to drive temperature and weather patterns all over the world.

“The paper emphasises the way that natural climate variations, like the IPO, can interact with the progression of human-caused global warming. Therefore, the timing of when we cross certain thresholds depends on the interplay between these two factors,” Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said.