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Greenhouse gas emissions are currently being insufficiently reduced, which is why some people are flirting with the idea of allowing the global temperature rise to exceed 1.5 degrees, Austrian scientists complain. Even if the climate could be cooled down again later by removing CO2 from the atmosphere, much of the damage would be irreparable, they explain in the scientific journal “Nature”.
Carl-Friedrich Schleussner and Joeri Rogelj from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg (Lower Austria) and an international team carried out model calculations to determine the consequences of a climate change overshoot, i.e. a global warming overshoot of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius worldwide. They also investigated the chances of the Earth’s climate cooling down again afterwards.
Climate change overshoot could no longer reduce temperatures
The scientists report that reducing temperatures after a climate change overshoot might no longer be possible, or at least more difficult than previously assumed. “There is overconfidence that global warming is reversible once net-zero greenhouse gas emissions are reached,” Rogelj said at an online press conference on the study.
Carbon dioxide would have to be extracted
However, it may even be necessary to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for this to happen. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that technologies will be developed that work and are affordable globally. Moreover, such a temperature overshoot would have irreversible consequences: Biodiversity would be irrecoverable because more creatures would become extinct. Sea levels would continue to rise even in the event of subsequent cooling.
Such a climate change overshoot must therefore be avoided at all costs. “Until we limit emissions to net zero, warming will continue,” explained Rogelj in a press release: ”The sooner we achieve this, the lower the peak of global warming and the smaller the risks of irreversible effects.” “Our publication dispels the notion that if the targets are exceeded in the future, a similar climate condition can be established as if we had done more in time to limit maximum warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” says Schleussner: ”However, the consequences of a climate change overshoot will probably be more and dirtier than previously assumed.”
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