If nations do everything they have pledged to address climate change, the world would be able to achieve still one of two internationally agreed goals to limit global warming.

‘It may be that we can keep warming below the symbolic 2 degrees mark for the first time if it’ s on the table, but it does, of course, imply that member states keep their promises,’ said study coauthor Malte Meinshausen, climate scientist at the University of Melbourne.

The difference is that Meinhausen’s is the first to be examined by professionals and published in a scientific journal.

When researchers looked at the nations’ climate pledges a year ago ahead of the Cop26 in Glasgow, they did not believe that warming of two degrees is still within reach, said lead author Professor Malte Meinshausen of the University of Melbourne.

The study “examines only this optimistic scenario. It does not check whether governments are making efforts to implement their long-term targets and whether they are credible,” said Niklas Hohne from the New Climate Institute, a researcher analyzing commitments to the Climate Action Tracker and who was not involved in the study.

Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement , often referred to as the Paris Accords or the Paris Climate Accords, is an international treaty on climate change, adopted in 2015. It covers climate change mitigation, (wikipedia)

Climate change

Contemporary climate change includes both global warming and its impacts on Earth’s weather patterns. There have been previous periods of climate change, (wikipedia)

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