A snapshot of fundamental geological knowledge to deal with climate change

The 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, concluded in December 2023. The meeting discussed the overarching goal of the legally binding Paris Agreement to limit “global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels”. The COP 28 recognised recent findings of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that “limiting global warming to 1.5 °C with no or limited overshoot requires deep, rapid and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions of 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 relative to the 2019 level, and reaching net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050”.