UN reports warn of large-scale damage to Earth’s ice from climate change

PARIS: Exceeding 1.5C of global warming will have “irreversible” consequences for glaciers, sea ice and the Earth’s frozen regions, two UN reports warned on Monday, calling for urgent action. The landmark 2015 Paris Agreement commits the world to limiting warming to well below 2C and pursuing efforts to hold it at 1.5C to try to avoid the worst effects of climate change. One of the reports said overshooting the 1.5C target “will bring large-scale and in many cases irreversible impacts” for the cryosphere — Earth’s ice in all its forms. Melting of glaciers and sea ice, the thawing of…