Top scientists have launched a yearly report series to plug knowledge gaps ahead of crunch climate talks, with their global warming"countdown clock" vying for the attention of world leaders and ordinary citizens alike.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned the world is on course to cross the key warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the early 2030s. "We cannot afford to wait" for the next IPCC assessment report in this"decade of action", said Peter Thorne, a professor of physical geography at Maynooth University in Ireland and co-author of the new report.The first peer-reviewed report of the series, published in the journal Earth System Science Data in June, said global warming reached 1.26 degrees Celsius in 2022 and increased at an"unprecedented rate" of more than 0.