The world's top court may not be able to compel states to halt planet-warming emissions, but experts say its momentous climate decision gives potent political firepower to campaigners. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/environment/2025/07/26/climate-change/world-court-climate-ruling-focus/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #environment #climatechange #climatechange #icj #emissions #environment #parisagreement
Ulrike Hahn
boosted
"Global surface air temperature change versus preindustrial level is a primary metric of global warming. Its 20-year mean serves as the indicator of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to monitor threshold crossings like of the 1.5 °C target of the Paris Agreement. Here we introduce a new benchmark timeseries 1850–2024 and projection to 2034 for this key metric, which shows a clear exceedance of 1.5 °C in 2024 by the annual mean (1.62 [1.55–1.69] °C). The 20-year mean still stayed below 1.5 °C (1.39 [1.29–1.49] °C) but is set to cross this threshold in 2028 [2025–2032]. Given this imminence, we propose improved quantification of the Paris goals by a simple four-classes definition (Paris compliance Target-1.5 °C, Well-below-2 °C; exceedance Risky-below-2 °C, Exceedance-2 °C) combined with a reliable tracking of goal compliance based on current and projected global warming levels."