Paris accord dials down climate risks, but danger from heat growing

World still on track to experience 57 more hot days a year by 2100, say scientists

- David Fogarty Deputy Foreign Editor

A decade since the 2015 United Nations Paris Agreement the world's most sweeping climate pact was adopted by 195 parties, the danger from global warming has slightly receded.

But current emissions pledges still put the planet on course for a dangerously hot future, and a global team of scientists has mapped out just how hot that future will be in a study published on Oct 16.

Every 0.1 deg C reduction in warming can make a lifesaving difference and underscores the need to double down on efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions and ramp up adaptation measures to searing heat.

The world now experiences, on average, an additional 11 hot days a year since the Paris Agreement was adopted, as growing fossil fuel emissions trap more heat in the atmosphere.

And there will be an additional 57 such days a year by 2100, based on national emissions reduction pledges submitted under the Paris Agreement, said scientists from Climate Central, a US-based group of scientists and communicators, and World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international scientific collaboration.

That does not sound like good news.

But the scientists point out that before the pact was adopted in December 2015, the world was on track for 4 deg C of warming above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century.

And that would mean the world would experience an average of 114 more hot days a year by 2100, the researchers said in the study released less than a month before the COP30 UN climate talks in Brazil.

"Hot days" in this context are days with temperatures warmer than 90 per cent of temperatures observed at a location over the 1991-2020 period. These are days with temperatures that people would consider hot based on their local experience.