What will happen to the earth by 2040 if we cannot stop climate change?

It’s very important that we do whatever we can to help slow climate change, even if some of the climate effects are unavoidable.

But to answer this, let’s focus on a few key variables. By 2040, no matter what we do – aggressively reduce emissions or not – the amount of warming will be about 1.5 to 1.6°C. With this warming will come some changes in rain. It is predicted that southwest and eastern Australia will be drier, Tasmania probably about the same. Heat waves will happen about twice as often, and when they do occur, they will be hotter. Sea level will likely be about 10cm higher than it is now, but this is difficult to predict.

This is not very good news, but the important thing to realise is that anything we do now, will start to make climate change less worse after 2040.