EARTH could breach the 1.5C global warming limit in as little as three years, top scientists have warned.
More than 60 of the world’s leading climate scientists said in a new report that countries are continuing to burn record amounts of fossil fuels while felling carbon-rich forests – leaving the international goal in peril, the BBC reports.
The report said that the global “carbon budget” – the amount of CO2 that can be emitted to give a 50% chance of keeping warming limited to 1.5C – had shrunk.
In 2020, scientists estimated that humanity could emit 500 billion more tonnes of CO2 for a 50% chance of breaching the limit.
This has now plunged to 130 billion. If emissions remain at their current rate – around 40 billion per year – that gives roughly three years before the “carbon budget” is spent.
The Paris Agreement, signed in 2015 by nearly 200 countries, set a target of limiting warming to 1.5C above temperatures set in the late 1800s before global industrialisation.
It is generally agreed to be a target measured over a 20-year average, so that even while 2024 was more than 1.5C hotter than pre-industrial temperatures, this does not constitute a breach.
The current rate of global warming is 0.27C per decade, which is much faster than at any point in the Earth’s history.
If this keeps up, the planet will breach the 1.5C target by 2030.
Professor Piers Forster, lead author of the report and director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds, told the BBC: “Things are all moving in the wrong direction.
“We're seeing some unprecedented changes and we're also seeing the heating of the Earth and sea-level rise accelerating as well.”
There are hopes that CO2 can be sucked out of the atmosphere in a bid to reverse global warming, however scientists caution against seeing this as a solution.
Joeri Rogelj, professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, said: “For larger exceedance [of 1.5C], it becomes less likely that removals [of CO2] will perfectly reverse the warming caused by today's emissions."
The report found that the Earth’s “energy imbalance” – the rate at which extra heat accumulates in the climate system – is increasing.
Over the last decade or so, this rate of heating is more than doubled since the 1970s and 1980s and is 25% than in the 2000s and 2010s.
Dr Matthew Palmer of the UK Met Office said this was a “very worrying number” over a short period of time.
Much of this extra heat – around 90% – is absorbed by the oceans, wrecking havoc on marine life and raising sea levels because ice melts.
While the warnings from the report are stark, its authors said that the rate of emissions increases appears to be slowing as new clean tech is being used.
