Climate change's crucial week ahead

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meets from Tuesday this week in France to mark the 30th anniversary of its creation. This body, under the auspices of the United Nations, is preparing what is likely to be the single biggest agenda-setting climate science report of the year.

That is, a survey due to be finalised in September which an early draft has indicated shows "there is a very high risk that, under current emissions trajectories and current national pledges, global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels". This 1.5 degree Celsius mark, which was the target set by Paris, was made to avoid the worst impacts of so called "runaway" climate change.

This is not the first time this claim has been made - for instance a group of senior climatologists warned in September 2016 that the planet could, as soon as 2050, see global average temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Yet the IPCC enjoys special credibility in this debate, hence the importance of its findings.