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A displaced girl carries a bottle of water she filled from nearby stranded flood-waters, as her family takes refuge in a camp, in Sehwan, Pakistan, September 30, 2022. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomr

What happens at 1.5C?

Published: May 31, 2023

Global temperatures have risen more than 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times and are now swiftly approaching a 1.5C of warming mark that scientists fear could herald a transition to far costlier and deadlier climate change impacts.

With fossil fuel use still rising globally, despite pledges to slash emissions, there is now a two-thirds chance that 1.5C of warming – the more ambitious limit set in the 2015 Paris Agreement – will be passed at least temporarily within five years.

What would that look like for people and communities around the world? Our collection, ‘What happens at 1.5C?’, takes a look, from Indonesia to Sweden, Brazil to the U.S. East Coast.