World Bank envisions a 4°C future

Rising oceans will make future storm surges worse.

NASA

Many governments have set a goal for limiting climate change: two degrees by the end of the century, and no more. However, most projections show we're lagging badly. Unless we accelerate a transition to renewables and nuclear, we're going to shoot right past that 2°C limit. But even as the hand-wringing about missed targets and bad trajectories has increased, it's been relatively rare to see a detailed analysis of the potential consequence. The World Bank has now stepped into that breach.

In a report released today, the World Bank analyzed the consequences of allowing temperatures to reach 4°C by the end of the century. Even the well understood problems—up to a meter of sea level rise, winter months that are warmer than our current summers—sound pretty ugly. The report also notes the possibility of tipping points and synergies make some of the impacts much harder to predict.

The report itself is a collaboration between the Bank's Global Expert Team for Climate Change Adaptation and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics. In addition to taking a different perspective on the problem of climate change, the report comes at a valuable time. It's been five years since the release of the fourth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; the fifth isn't due until late next year.

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