Global temperatures to rise by 3 degrees Celsius: European Commission report

LONDON: Global temperatures will increase by around 3 degrees Celsius, despite current efforts to cut emissions and to limit the temperature increase to below 2 degrees Celsius, researchers have found.

An assessment by European Commission's Joint Research Centre ( JRC) shows that current climate commitments submitted by 155 countries for The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP21, would increase global temperature by around 3 degrees Celsius.

The 155 countries representing around 90 per cent of global emissions have submitted their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) on climate policy to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC) in preparation of the new climate negotiations to be held in December in Paris.

The assessment of these initial proposals concludes that, if aggregated and fully implemented, unconditional INDCs (without international climate financial support or international cooperation mechanisms) could set global emissions growth at around 17 per cent above 2010 level by 2030.

Under European Union's scenario to reach the global goal set by all Parties under the UNFCCC, ie limit global temperature increase to below 2 degrees Celsius, global emissions would peak in 2020 and decline afterwards to 10 per cent below 2010 levels by 2030.

When considering unconditional and conditional (with international climate financial support and other forms of international cooperation) INDCs combined, JRC found that global emissions could peak shortly before 2030 at 12 per cent above 2010 level.

Assuming countries would keep on their efforts after 2030, these could limit the long term temperature increase to around 3 degrees Celsius.