What to expect this year: COP28 UN climate talks

This year's world climate conference, COP28, aims to readdress finance for loss and damage, but what can we expect from it?

The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP28, is being held in Dubai and began November 30th. Sultan Al Jaber has officially opened the COP28 climate talks, which will run until December 12th.

For almost three decades, world leaders have gathered every year to address climate change and how to avoid its immensely detrimental repercussions.

Last year, at COP27, the focus was on loss and damage in developing countries, with these countries seeing the most severe impacts from climate change driven extremes. This year, the aim is to turn the ideas from last year into a reality.

Instead of the initial suggestion from the Paris agreement to stay within the 2°C (3.6°F) threshold of global warming, the IPCC have since found it would be far safer to stay within 1.5°C (2.7°F) of warming. Damage is still expected, albeit significantly less extreme.

A 1.5°C increase would still lead to rising sea levels, coral bleaching, an increase in severity and frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts, heatwaves, floods and storms.

Findings from the IPCC since COP26 have concluded that there is however a slim chance for the world to stay within the 1.5°C threshold, and that it would require crucial global cooperation.

The influence of El Niño this year however, alongside a continued rise of global carbon emissions, will bring that 1.5°C target even nearer.

On November 17th, global warming exceeded 2°C on a single day compared to pre-industrial times, for the first time ever.

The target 1.5°C of warming as explained above, refers to the average over one year, rather than a single day, though WMO believe this will still be broken in the coming years.

The UN Secretary has addressed the summit that this target is still plausible, while the UN chief says in his opening speech that 2023 is to be the hottest year on record.