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http://www.skynews.com.au/eco/article.aspx?id=677187&vId=
Keeping global warming below two degrees over the next decade is achievable, but decisive action is crucial, a new study has found.
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, warns that the targets made at United Nations conferences in Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun in 2010 could be slipping away if action is not taken.
The review examined nearly 200 different scenarios from scientific literature.
If found that the target of 44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions is a feasible milestone.
The study's senior author Dr Malte Meinshausen from the University of Melbourne said it is vital that the growing emission trend is reversed this decade.
'Our study revealed there are many emissions scenarios that are economically and technologically feasible pathways into a two degree target, but that for countries to get closer to this target they need to honour the higher end of their pledges,' Dr Meinshausen said in a statement.
An international team has used Dr Meinshausen's model to examine how emissions in 2020 can be managed with a long-term two degree target.
'As long as we keep emitting carbon dioxide, the climate will continue to warm. There is no way around a zero carbon economy sooner or later if we want to stay below two degrees,' Dr Meinshausen said.
The study said that each nation will have to move to the more ambitious end of their pledges if they are to meet the two per cent target. For Australia this would mean reducing carbon emissions by 25 per cent.
The federal government plans to cut carbon emissions by five per cent by 2020 from the levels of 2000.
'If the international community is serious about avoiding dangerous climate change, countries seem ill-advised by continuing to increase emissions, which they have done so in the last ten years, which ultimately will lead to disastrous consequences later on,' Dr Meinshausen said.
'We can anticipate Australia will be one of the countries hardest hit by climate change due to recent years of droughts and floods. This is consistent with projections that we are going to expect more of these kinds of extreme conditions in the coming decades.'
