UN forecast: the planet will warm by 2.6 degrees by 2100

If all the world's countries fulfil the climate commitments they have already announced, the planet will warm by 2.6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. That is the forecast in a new report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Last year's report put the figure at up to 2.5 degrees, meaning the situation has worsened.

According to UNEP head Inger Andersen, every fraction of a degree above the 1.5-degree mark increases the risk of deadly floods, heatwaves and wildfires like those many countries experienced this year. The 2015 Paris climate agreement assumes that the rise in average temperature can be limited to one and a half degrees by the end of the century.

Why the forecast has worsened

According to the UN programme, the deterioration is linked above all to the United States moving away from its earlier climate protection plans under the administration of Donald Trump. After China, the United States is the world's second-largest producer of greenhouse gases.

Even the best scenario is above the target

There is also a very optimistic scenario: all states carry out their climate plans and achieve their declared climate neutrality. Even then, the Earth would warm by 2.1 degrees by 2100 compared with the pre-industrial era.

All forecasts are well above the 1.5-degree target. According to the European climate monitoring service Copernicus, average warming over the three-year period 2023–2025 exceeded 1.5 degrees for the first time. The DPA agency reports that most experts believe it will not be possible to stay within that limit, and the last hope is to make the overshoot last as short a time as possible.

“Overshooting does not mean capitulation. We can still make it as small and as short as possible and bring the temperature back below 1.5 degrees by the end of the century,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres stressed in connection with the report.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz