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A new survey of climate experts reveals that a majority believe the Earth to be headed for a rise in global temperatures far higher than the 2015 Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to well-below 2°C.

The study was published in Communications Earth & Environment. It also shows that two-thirds of respondents—all of them authors on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—believe we may succeed in achieving net zero CO 2 emissions during the second half of this century. This indicates some optimism that mitigation efforts may be starting to bend the emissions curve toward what would be needed to achieve the Paris temperature goal.

A majority also acknowledged the potential for atmospheric CO 2 removal, with a median response indicating a belief that the technology could remove up to five gigatons of carbon dioxide (GtCO 2 ) a year by 2050. That is at the lower end of the range believed to be necessary to meet the Paris targets.

"We wanted to survey some of the top climate experts in the world to get some insight into their perceptions of different future climate outcomes," says the paper's lead author, Seth Wynes, a former postdoctoral fellow at Concordia, now an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo.

"These scientists also engage in important climate change communication, so their optimism or pessimism can affect how decisionmakers are receiving messages about climate change."

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