Weather Insider: Tracking our progress on global climate objectives

Every year, the United Nations holds a global conference on climate change known as the COP summit. It's at this summit where people and diplomats alike from all over the world come together to talk about the world's most pressing climate and environmental issues. This year's COP 30 conference is in Belem, Brazil.

This year's COP summit is particularly special as it marks 10 years since the Paris Climate Accords were agreed to in 2015. The Paris Climate Accords were a landmark agreement between just about every country on earth to make a global effort to reduce carbon emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°C [above the pre-industrial average]. As it stands now, we are far off from this target. Current estimates have us not only exceeding 2°C of warming, but possibly even exceeding 2.5°C. This would compound the issues caused by lower levels of global warming and potentially cause us to cross the thresholds of more global tipping points.

In order to limit how much our planet warms, we need to curb our carbon emissions across the globe. Avoiding 2°C of global warming is still possible, albeit becoming more and more difficult each year. While the global climatic outlook is looking increasingly grim, it's not all bad news. We are doing more work than we ever have to curb emissions and advance emerging technologies. As well, the pace at which we are accomplishing some of this work is increasing. A good example is solar technologies. We are now able to produce solar panels faster than ever before.