Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, Synthesis Report (United Nations - Oct. 28, 2024)  This report synthesizes information from the 168 latest available nationally determined contributions communicated by 195 Parties to the Paris Agreement and recorded in the registry of nationally determined contributions as at 9 September 2024. Key finding: current national climate plans fall miles short of what’s needed to stop global heating from crippling every economy, and wrecking billions of lives and livelihoods across every country.

 

The year 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record after an extended streak of exceptionally high monthly global mean temperatures, World Meteorological Organization (WMO).   The January – September 2024 global mean surface air temperature was 1.54 °C (with a margin of uncertainty of ±0.13°C) above the pre-industrial average, boosted by a warming El Niño event, according to an analysis of six international datasets used by WMO. 

 

Water, Ice, Society, Ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalaya, ICIMOD (June 2023).  Snow and ice in the Hindu Kush Himalaya are fast disappearing, with grave implications for people and nature. Unprecedented and largely irreversible changes to the Hindu Kush Himalayan cryosphere, driven by global temperature rises, threaten two billion people and are accelerating species extinction.

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Observationally-constrained projections of an ice-free Arctic even under a low emission scenario, Yeon-Hee Kim et al., Nature Communications (June 6, 2023). By scaling models’ sea ice response to greenhouse gases to best match the observed trend in an approach validated in an imperfect model test, we project an ice-free Arctic in September under all scenarios considered. These results emphasize the profound impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the Arctic, and demonstrate the importance of planning for and adapting to a seasonally ice-free Arctic in the near future.

 

AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023, IPCC. Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming, with global surface temperature reaching 1.1°C above 1850–1900 in 2011–2020. Global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase, with unequal historical and ongoing contributions arising from unsustainable energy use, land use and land-use change, lifestyles and patterns of consumption and production across regions, between and within countries, and among individuals.

 

Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change, IPCC (April 2022).  This report assesses recent developments and current trends, including data uncertainties and gaps. Section C, System transformations to limit global warming, identifies emission pathways and alternative mitigation portfolios consistent with limiting global warming to different levels, and assesses specific mitigation options at the sectoral and system level. Section D addresses Linkages between mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable development. Section E, Strengthening the response, assesses knowledge of how enabling conditions of institutional design, policy, finance, innovation and governance arrangements can contribute to climate change mitigation in the context of sustainable development. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise!

 

Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (02.27.22). "Today’s IPCC report is an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership. With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change.   Nearly half of humanity is living in the danger zone – now.  Many ecosystems are at the point of no return – now. Unchecked carbon pollution is forcing the world’s most vulnerable on a frog march to destruction – now.   The facts are undeniable. This abdication of leadership is criminal.   The world’s biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home. It is essential to meet the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees." António Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations.

 

 

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