World on track for catastrophic 3 degrees Celsius warming, UN warns

As a result, limiting warming to the relative safety of the Paris targets has become more difficult, requiring even steeper annual emissions cuts of 7.5 percent or 4 percent by 2030 for 1.5C or 2C, respectively. 

With the policies currently in place across the globe, the world is heading for 3.1C of warming by the end of the century, the report says. Measures outlined in current NDCs, which haven’t been fully implemented, would bring that down to between 2.6C and 2.8C. 

Even the best-case scenario of 2.6C, however, represents “catastrophic” warming with “debilitating impacts to people, planet and economies,” the U.N. warns. 

Under all three scenarios, the world’s chances of limiting warming to 1.5C are “virtually zero,” the authors write, with global temperatures “well above” that level by 2050 and a “one-in-three chance that warming already exceeds 2C by then.” 

To get on track toward 1.5C, global emissions ought to fall 42 percent by 2030, or 28 percent for a pathway to 2C — a message also included in last year’s report, aptly titled “Broken Record.” 

The new NDCs — due in February 2025 — are meant to include measures and targets up to the year 2035. By then, global emissions should fall 57 percent for 1.5C and 37 percent for 2C, according to this year’s report, dubbed “No More Hot Air … Please!”