The European Union's Copernicus climate service now projects that global average temperature could pass the Paris Agreement's 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) long-term threshold as soon as 2029, according to an Inside Climate News report carried Thursday by Ars Technica from the COP31 talks in Antalya, Turkey¹.

When the 2015 Paris pact was adopted, that crossing had been projected around 2045, the Copernicus bulletin said as summarized in the report¹.

Copernicus scientists wrote that the shift "suggests that global warming has accelerated in recent years," and that rising greenhouse-gas concentrations from human activity remain the main driver even if every feature of the recent temperature jump is not fully understood¹.

A separate Climate Action Tracker assessment, also described in the same dispatch, found the planet still on course for nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit of warming by 2100, a level the group said would devastate coral reefs, disrupt agriculture and forests, and melt most of the world's ice¹.

Even under an optimistic case that assumes full implementation of existing policies and promises, temperatures would rise 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels by 2100, an increase climate scientists quoted in the piece called extremely dangerous¹.

Sarah Heck, a climate policy analyst with Climate Analytics, said governments have not meaningfully improved the end-of-century outlook and that collective action has stalled for a fifth consecutive year, with new oil and gas projects and weakened policies offsetting efforts to leave fossil fuels¹.

Niklas Hohne of The New Climate Institute said progress on renewable energy has not yet bent the emissions curve fast enough¹. He also said COP31 co-hosts Turkey and Australia have opposed putting the word "clean" on electrification targets, which he tied to fossil-fuel interests; the report noted Australia's coal exports and Turkey's coal-heavy power sector and said neither host had offered specific fossil-fuel transition plans¹.

Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare said wealthy countries have not led on a fossil-fuel shift and that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen did not mention transitioning away from fossil fuels in her COP31 speech this week¹. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, attending the talks for the first time since 2021, said current warming is already linked to deadly floods, wildfires and glacier collapses¹.

The Ars Technica page is a republication of Bob Berwyn's Inside Climate News story; this filing did not independently open the Copernicus bulletin or the Climate Action Tracker report¹.