These days climate change is the buzz word and in wake of this many conferences have taken place. The last major conference on climate change was held in Paris and currently it is taking place in Katowice in Poland.
At COP 21 in Paris, on 12 December 2015, parties to the UNFCCC reached a landmark agreement to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a sustainable low carbon future.
The Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
As per the records, ten warmest years have been witnessed since 1998 and 2018 is the fourth year in a row with average global temperature of 1 degree-Celsius above the 19th century's average.
We need to understand one thing that global warming doesn't give rise to El Nino. El Nino causes a set of changes in the weather system near the coast of northern Peru and Ecuador every few years, causing the surface of the Pacific Ocean to become warmer. It affects rainfall patterns and has caused droughts and floods in the past. Transfer of oceanic energy to the atmosphere leads to rise in temperatures. It will not be wrong to say that oceanic temperatures are currently above normal and are inching towards the El Nino year.
As per Skymet, possibly the winters of 2018 or while spilling into the spring season of 2019 can be called as the El Nino year. Therefore, it won't be wrong to say that 2019 too will be one of the warmest years.
Ahead of the final Paris agreement in 2015, India settled with some commitments. The delegates promised that they will try to reduce emission intensity by 33-35% by the year 2030. By reducing emission intensity, they meant that there will be more efficient usage of the energy resources. In other words, emission intensity is a measure to check that how efficiently the energy is being utilized.
We also promised that at least 40% of the total electricity will be generated via renewable resources of energy by 2030. And, chances are likely to achieve this target well before in time by 2020 itself. The promise was made to achieve 2.5 to 3 billion tons of additional carbon sinks through extensive afforestation.
Image Credit: Climate Home News
Please Note: Any information picked from here must be attributed to skymetweather.com