Sharjah24 - AFP: Half a degree Celsius may not seem like much, but climate experts say a world that has warmed 1.5 degrees Celsius above 19th-century levels compared to 2C could be the difference between life and death.
A 2C Earth would see the number of people facing extreme heat waves more than double. A quarter of a billion more people would face water shortages.
The Arctic Ocean will be ice-free not once in a century but once every 10 years.
Countries that signed the Paris Agreement vowed to cap the rise in global temperatures -- already 1.1C above the pre-industrial benchmark -- at well below 2C, and preferably at 1.5C.
Humanity is still far off the mark: even if fulfilled, current pledges to reduce emissions would still set the planet on course to warm by a "catastrophic" 2.7C, according to the UN.
Here's what the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says we can expect in a world that warms by 1.5C, 2C and beyond.
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