The United Nations said Wednesday the 1.5C target would be missed and outlined how global temperatures might be brought back down in a first-of-its-kind assessment met with dismay in climate-vulnernable nations.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres last year acknowledged the inevitability of overshooting 1.5C in the next few years but this assessment is the first by a UN agency to unambiguously state the target would be breached.
Scientists agree that warming above 1.5C relative to pre-industrial times poses grave risks and nearly 200 nations committed a decade ago to try and keep global temperature rises to this safer threshold.
But in a much-anticipated report involving dozens of scientists, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said the best remaining option had shifted "from avoiding overshoot to navigating it".
"It's a reality check. We have to live with this warmer world... but there's still a lot we can do to limit warming," said report co-author Richard Betts from the University of Exeter.
