12/05/2022 | Focus of the IPCC Assessment Reports Has Shifted to Lower Temperatures

Although a significantly stronger global temperature increase is to be expected in the meantime, climate research is apparently still too much concerned with the so-called 2-degree target of international climate policy. A team of researchers from the Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU), the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam and the University of Cambridge have expressed their fears that the actual topic is being missed in a recent article in the scientific journal "Earth's Future".
The study focuses on how the different global temperature increases presented in the IPCC reports have changed over time. While the first four Assessment Reports focused on temperatures above and below 2°C to roughly equal degrees, the more recent Fifth and Sixth Assessment Reports focus much more on warming below 2°C. This is of concern because warming above 2°C is more likely under current emissions pathways and has more influence on climate risk assessments.

Citation

Florian U. Jehn, Luke Kemp, Ekaterina Ilin, Christoph Funk, Jason R. Wang, Lutz Breuer, "Focus of the IPCC Assessment Reports Has Shifted to Lower Temperatures," Earth's Future, 06 May 2022.
https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002876