At Two Degrees

Climate change will be complicated, and forecasting the impacts of climate change is by no means easy. But there are lots of forecasts out there, and we’ve pulled some of them together here. They are organized on this page for easy reference, but without references. Many are drawn from 2020 Lynas_Our Final Warning Six Degrees of Climate Emergency

Note that this amount of average global temperature change is likely to occur within the next 2-3 decades

• 2^o C - “meandering” jet stream increases length of wet and hot weather across Europe

• 2^o C - 2 billion people are exposed to extreme heat at least once every 20 years

• 2^o C - 18% of insects in the Amazon lose 50% of their climatic range

• 2^o C - 79 million people displaced by rising sea levels

• 2^o C - 150% increase in land area and number of people affected by 5-day precipitation events

• 2^o C - 163 million Europeans are exposed to unprecedented summer heat waves

• 2^o C - 529,000 estimated additional deaths due to malnutrition worldwide by 2050

• 2^o C - 10’s of millions of Chinese become exposed to dangerous summer heat waves for the first time

• 2^o C - An ice-free Arctic almost certainly will occur in a 2^o C world, leading go 6.6 million km2 of melted permafrost

• 2^o C - An ice-free Arctic is almost certain

• 2^o C - average European summer resembles Russian summer of 2010

• 2^o C - average flow of rivers across Northern Hemisphere increases by as much as 50%

• 2^o C - by 2050 all cities have shifted to the South by the equivalent of 1,000 km

• 2^o C - by 2050 Seattle has the climate of San Francisco, London - Barcelona, Madrid - Marrakech

• 2^o C - Central American rainforests are unlikely to survive

• 2^o C - countries will hit peak seasonal meltwater from the Himalayas in the 2020’s, followed by a steep decline

• 2^o C - EU likely to experience 30,000 heat related deaths per year by the 2030’s

• 2^o C - food production falls by 99 kcal per person per day, resulting in greater malnutrition, and more than 500,000 climate-related deaths by 2050

• 2^o C - Ganges river flow could increase by 30-110% as a result of precipitation and meltwater

• 2^o C - Greenland ice sheet likely to irreversibly tip toward melting early on

• 2^o C - hundreds of billions of tons of carbon could be released from permafrost thawing in coming centuries

• 2^o C - IEA has estimated that by 2050 new air conditioning demand will be equivalent to generating capacity of US, EU, and Japan.

• 2^o C - mammals, birds, and reptiles lose 1/3 of their climatic range by 2100

• 2^o C - many African countries experience a 10% reduction in rainfall, and dry spells 15-19 days longer

• 2^o C - more than 130 large cities are at risk of flooding from sea level rise by 2100, at annual cost of $1.4 trillion

• 2^o C - mortality begins to increase exponentially at a heat index of 40oC (104oF)

• 2^o C - overall global droughts increase by 20%, with 400 million people more exposed

• 2^o C - probability of 100 year flood events in China increases by a factor of 2.4

• 2^o C - Reduces 99th percentile VAR from $24 to $13 trillion

• 2^o C - tens of billions of tons of carbon could be released by permafrost thawing by 2100, including methane

• 2^o C - thawing permafrost by 2050 will have major costs and implications

• 2^o C - the freezing level in the Peruvian Andes rises by 230 meters

• 2^o C - would expose 48% of global population to deadly heat

• 2^o C policies and technology advancement fundamentally disrupt centralized electric utilities

• 2^o C policies create up to 30% VAR in oil sector

• 2^o C policies create up to 65% VAR in auto sector

• 2^o C policies disrupt cruise industry

• 2^o C policies disrupt fashion industry

• 2^o C policies disrupt fashion industry

• 2^o C policies disrupt meat suppliers

• 2^o C policies generate 80% increase in value for building efficiency sector

• 2^o C Policies reduce the value of fossil fuels by $185 Trillion