GENEVA - The incoming head of the UN climate science agency told Reuters on Thursday the world would exceed the Paris deal warming target of 1.5 deg C above pre-industrial levels, as states’ policies have not been ambitious enough.

In an interview a day after being voted the next head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Britain’s Professor Jim Skea said the organisation is committed to “at least a little bit of overshoot” of the long-term threshold set in the 2015 Paris deal.

“They (governments) have not put in place policies that are ambitious enough to allow the goals of the Paris agreement to be met. That is absolutely for sure,” he said via video link from Nairobi where he won a run-off against Brazil’s Dr Thelma Krug.

“We are, I think, committed to at least some degree of overshoot,” he said.

The 35-year old UN body is responsible for assessing the latest climate change science through its authoritative reports. Interest in this election has been high as extreme heatwaves across China, Europe and North America have sparked fires and water shortages, bumping climate change up the political agenda.

Prof Skea, a sustainable energy expert who has focused on mitigating climate change’s impacts, said he had been personally surprised by the heatwaves that IPCC scientists have long warned would arrive.

“The fact that such things are happening is in the sense not surprising. The speed with which it has come across us is and, unless we take further action to reduce emissions, we are going to see this actually getting worse,” he said. REUTERS