France, Oct. 21 -- The chances of keeping average warming to 1.5C have effectively vanished - at least temporarily - the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in its annual Emissions Gap Report published on Wednesday.

The report comes ahead of Cop31, the UN climate conference to be held in Antalya, Turkey next month. UNEP had already raised the prospect of an overshoot - temporarily exceeding the 1.5C limit before bringing temperatures back down - in its Limiting Overshoot report in September.

Average global warming is already around 1.4C above pre-industrial times, when economic development in the West began warming the planet. The past nine years have been the hottest on record.

The year 2024 was the first individual year to average m...