Global Warming Could Be Limited To 3 Degrees C With Current Pledges

National climate pledges submitted so far by 155 countries — responsible for around 90 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — could limit the planet’s long-term temperature increase to around 3 degrees Celsius, according to an assessment by the European Commission Joint Research Center (JRC). The climate pledges, submitted to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change ahead of December’s climate negotiations in Paris, are officially known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs. Analysis of unconditional INDCs concludes that, if fully implemented, they could set global emissions growth at around 17 percent above 2010 levels by 2030. Combining unconditional and conditional INDCs — those that would rely on such mechanisms as international climate financial support — JRC found that global carbon emissions could peak shortly before 2030 at 12 percent above 2010 levels, then decline enough to hold temperature increases to 3 degrees C.