Dr Joeri Rogelj is a research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, and a coordinating lead author of the IPCC’s Special Report on 1.5C. Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner is head of climate science and impacts at Climate Analytics, and is on the steering committee of the initiative Half a degree Additional warming, Prognosis and Projected Impacts (HAPPI).
Interpreting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C Temperature Limit
In a commentary paper for the journal Geophysical Research Letters, we show that the temperature limits in the Paris Agreement should be understood as changes in long-term global averages attributed to human activity, which exclude natural variability. This means 1.5C might be breached in individual years well before the global long-term 1.5C temperature limit has definitively been crossed.
October 11, 2017