{"id":9384,"date":"2018-06-25T16:10:03","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T15:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=9384"},"modified":"2018-06-25T16:10:03","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T15:10:03","slug":"dangerous-climate-change-is-likely-concludes-ou-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/science-mct\/science-environment\/dangerous-climate-change-is-likely-concludes-ou-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Dangerous climate change is likely, concludes OU research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Research by scientists at The Open University reveals that sensitive regions of the world\u00a0are still at risk from the dangerous and potentially\u00a0irreversible effects of climate change; even if we meet the target of not increasing global temperature above 1.5\u00b0C over the next 100 years.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The research, which reviewed the targets set in the <a href=\"https:\/\/unfccc.int\/process-and-meetings\/the-paris-agreement\/the-paris-agreement\">2015 Paris Climate Agreement<\/a>, concluded that regions of the world,\u00a0such as the Arctic and South-East Asian monsoon region, could be damaged irreversibly as they are particularly sensitive to changes to global temperatures.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Simulating different climate futures<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The OU researchers developed a three-dimensional climate-carbon cycle model, and simulated the different climate futures. Leading the research, which is published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41558-018-0197-7\"><em>Nature Climate<\/em> Change<\/a>, is Lecturer in Earth Systems Science at The Open University, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/people\/pbh56\">Dr Philip Holden<\/a>; he said:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe regional uncertainties associated with the Paris Climate Agreement have not been explored before. This is because, until now, researchers have used either very simple models or models that were too complex to investigate the range of possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Governments must act now<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>On a more optimistic note, the research also concludes that meeting the target set by the\u00a0<em>2015 Paris Climate Agreement<\/em>\u00a0of limiting the increase in global average temperatures to well below 2\u00b0C\u00a0<strong>does not depend on<\/strong>\u00a0future generations to remove vast amounts of carbon from the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. Instead, governments can achieve the goals through emission reductions, but only if they act now to promote a range of\u00a0policies to fully\u00a0support the existing pace of technological change, as described in a related paper in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41558-018-0182-1?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nclimate%2Frss%2Faop+%28Nature+Climate+Change+-+AOP%29\"><em>Nature Climate Change<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cOur models show that it is possible to meet the 2015 Paris Agreement, but only if governments take decisive and urgent action through strengthening climate change policies to encourage rapid divestment from fossil fuels,\u201d continued Dr Holden.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The OU researchers worked in collaboration with academics from: University of California \u2013 Riverside, University of Sheffield, Max Planck Institute of Meteorology, University of Hamburg, Cambridge Econometrics, and the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance, University of Cambridge, and Radboud University in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Research by scientists at The Open University reveals that sensitive regions of the world\u00a0are still at risk from the dangerous and potentially\u00a0irreversible effects of climate change; even if we meet the target of not increasing global temperature above 1.5\u00b0C over the next 100 years. The research, which reviewed the targets set in the 2015 Paris [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9391,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[157,474,705,815,861,1157,1669],"class_list":["post-9384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-environment","tag-arctic","tag-climate-models","tag-dr-philip-holden","tag-environment","tag-faculty-of-stem","tag-international","tag-paris-climate-agreement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}