IPCC special report on feasibility of 1.5C climate target

A meeting is currently being held in Geneva to prepare a special report to assess the feasibility of the UNFCCC’s international goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C.

The report will set out the specific benefits of the 1.5C target, put in place by the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, as well as the practical actions needed to achieve.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes its main assessment reports every five years, as well as shorter special reports on topics such as weather and renewable energy.

The Geneva meeting aims to draft the structure of the report: title, chapter headings and a short summary.

Dr Hoesung Lee, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) discussed what the report should cover: “One notion that runs through all this, is feasibility. How feasible is it to limit warming to 1.5C? How feasible is it to develop the technologies that will get us there?… We must analyse policy measures in terms of feasibility.”

Elena Manaenkova, incoming deputy secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization said: “I was [at the Paris talks]. I know the reason why it was done…[P]arties were keen to do even better, to go faster, to go even further…The word ‘feasibility’ is not in the Paris Agreement, is not in the decision. But that’s really what it is [about].”

Dr Andrew King, a researcher in climate extremes at the University of Melbourne emitted doubts about the feasibility of the 1.5C target, according to Carbon Brief: “I think one unintended outcome of the Paris Agreement was that it made the public think limiting warming to 1.5C is possible with only marginally stronger policy from government on reducing emissions and this is simply not the case.”

The IPCC is expected to deliver the 1.5C report in September 2018, in time for the UNFCCC’s “facilitative dialogue” scheduled for the same year.

Expectations will be high, Lee told delegates yesterday: “You can be sure that the report, when it is available in two years’ time…will attract enormous attention. So you have a great responsibility.”

Scientists who wish to have their research taken into account in the 1.5C report will have to submit it to a peer-reviewed journal by October 2017 and have it accepted for publication by April 2018.

Scientists, policymakers, businesses and civil society will discuss the challenges of meeting the 1.5C target at an international conference at Oxford University next month.

The Geneva meeting will conclude on a proposed plan for the report, which will be submitted to the IPCC panel during its next meeting in October in Bangkok.