2015 temps to hit 1°C above pre-industrial levels

The conference, which will be held from November 30 to December 11, will gather 196 parties to reach an agreement aimed at limiting the rise in global temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) between pre-industrial times and the end of the century.

The report calls for immediate action are given extra weight by a separate report from Climate Central, which warned that a business-as-usual emissions scenario would see up to 760 million people threatened by rising sea waters, with a few of the worlds poorest most at risk.

The UK Met Office says El Niño has had a strong impact on this year’s warming but in their words: “It’s clear that it is human influence driving our modern climate into uncharted territory”. Melting ice and increasing sea levels could swallow up many islands and costal areas, leading to grave global consequences.

Britain’s Met Office said 2015 will mark the moment when global temperatures breach the halfway mark towards 2 degrees Celsius, a figure judged to be a potentially risky indicator of climate change.

1 degree might not seem like a big deal but it is significant, especially when you consider many countries, including the US, have set a limit of 2 degrees Celsius as a risky level of warming.

“As the world continues to warm in the coming decades, however, we will see more and more years passing the 1 degree marker-eventually it will become the norm”, he said.

The Met Office report is one in a raft of global warming papers released ahead of COP21.

On Monday, WMO reported that levels of carbon dioxide and methane, the two most important greenhouse gases, reached record highs a year ago, continuing the warming effect on the world’s climate.

“When we [build] infrastructure, for instance, [we need] to make sure it’s in a safe place today but also in a safe place with sea level rise and the change in rainfall and so on”, the Guardian quoted Hallegatte.

“That means we’ve got less than 0.5C of wiggle room left, emphasizing the importance of immediate reductions in carbon emissions”, Mann said. “That having been said, it is a frightening reminder that we’re nearing the 2˚C “dangerous limit”, particularly given that another 0.5˚C of warming (as the climate catches up to the carbon we’ve already emitted) is nearly certainly in the pipeline”.

Climate change could add 12 percent to 2030 food prices in Africa, where food consumption of the poorest households amounts to over 60 percent of their total spending. A second set of the images depicts the same cities if the world was 2 degrees Celsius warmer.