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At the current rate of emissions, the Paris goal of limiting warming to 1.5C as a long-term average – rather than a single year – could be crossed within the next decade<\/a>.<\/p>\n This would be a hugely symbolic milestone, but researchers say it wouldn’t mark a cliff edge beyond which climate change will spin out of control.<\/p>\n The impacts of climate change would continue to accelerate, however with every little increase in warming – something that the extreme heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods<\/a> over the past 12 months have given us a taste of.<\/p>\n An extra half a degree – the difference between 1.5C and 2C of global warming – also greatly increases the risks of passing so-called tipping points. <\/p>\n These are thresholds within the climate system which, if crossed, could lead to rapid and potentially irreversible changes. <\/p>\n For example, if the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets passed a tipping point, their potentially runaway collapse could cause catastrophic rises to global sea-levels over the centuries that followed.<\/p>\n But researchers are keen to emphasise that humans can still make a difference to the world’s warming trajectory. <\/p>\n The world has made some progress<\/a>, with green technologies like renewables and electric vehicles booming in many parts of the world. <\/p>\n This has meant some of the very worst case scenarios of 4C warming or more this century – thought possible a decade ago – are now considered much less likely, based on current policies and pledges<\/a>. <\/p>\n And perhaps most encouragingly of all, it’s still thought that the world will more or less stop warming once net zero carbon emissions<\/a> are reached. Effectively halving emissions this decade is seen as particularly crucial.<\/p>\n “That means we can ultimately control how much warming the world experiences, based on our choices as a society, and as a planet,” says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at US group Berkeley Earth.<\/p>\n “Doom is not inevitable.” <\/p>\n Graphics by Erwan Rivault.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n