The 2 °C Global Temperature Target and the Evolution of the Long-Term Goal of Addressing Climate Change—From the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to the Paris Agreement

TLDR

The Paris Agreement legally enshrined the 2 °C global temperature target, transforming the qualitative goal of the UNFCCC into a numerical limit and prompting successive IPCC assessments to quantify the long‑term climate objective. This article examines how the evolution of the 2 °C target has shaped scientific assessment, international negotiations, and global low‑carbon development. The authors analyze the target’s origin, the series of IPCC assessments of Article 2, and its political promotion to assess its influence on climate science and policy.

Abstract

The Paris Agreement proposed to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. It was thus the first international treaty to endow the 2 °C global temperature target with legal effect. The qualitative expression of the ultimate objective in Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has now evolved into the numerical temperature rise target in Article 2 of the Paris Agreement. Starting with the Second Assessment Report (SAR) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an important task for subsequent assessments has been to provide scientific information to help determine the quantified long-term goal for UNFCCC negotiation. However, due to involvement in the value judgment within the scope of non-scientific assessment, the IPCC has never scientifically affirmed the unacceptable extent of global temperature rise. The setting of the long-term goal for addressing climate change has been a long process, and the 2 °C global temperature target is the political consensus on the basis of scientific assessment. This article analyzes the evolution of the long-term global goal for addressing climate change and its impact on scientific assessment, negotiation processes, and global low-carbon development, from aspects of the origin of the target, the series of assessments carried out by the IPCC focusing on Article 2 of the UNFCCC, and the promotion of the global temperature goal at the political level.