50 top scientists cautioned Thursday that record-high greenhouse gas emissions and decreasing air pollution have accelerated global warming.
“Human-induced warming has been increasing at an unprecedented rate of over 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade,” they said in a peer-reviewed policymaker research from 2013 to 2022.
Over the same period, average yearly emissions reached an all-time high of 54 billion tonnes of CO2 or comparable gases, or 1,700 tonnes per second.
Top scientists warn of record 0.2C per decade warming.
At the crucial COP28 climate meeting in Dubai later this year, a “Global Stocktake” at the UN talks will review progress toward the 2015 Paris Agreement’s temperature objectives. World leaders will be presented with the fresh statistics.
The findings appear to rule out stopping global warming at the Paris treaty’s 1.5C objective, long seen as a guard rail for a largely climate-safe future despite catastrophic repercussions.
“Even though we are not yet at 1.5C warming, the carbon budget”—the amount of greenhouse gases mankind can produce without surpassing that limit—”will likely be exhausted in only a few years,” said lead author Piers Forster, a physics professor at Leeds.
According to Forster and colleagues, many of whom were key IPCC contributors, the UN’s climate scientific advisory organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), gathered data for its most recent benchmark report in 2021 with half the funding.
Unexpected results
They estimated that carbon dioxide, methane, and other warming factors from fossil fuels must not surpass 250 billion tonnes (Gt) to have a coin-toss probability of keeping below 1.5C.
Bettering the chances to two-thirds or four-fifths would cut that carbon allotment to 150 Gt or 100 Gt, respectively, a two- or three-year lifeline at present emissions.
The IPCC estimates that CO2 pollution must be cut by 40% by 2030 and eliminated by mid-century to meet Paris temperature objectives.
New data show that one of the decade’s biggest climate successes has accelerated global warming.
Coal, which emits more carbon than oil or gas, is used less to generate power, slowing carbon emissions.
It has also cut air pollution that protects Earth from the Sun.
As air pollution decreases, more heat will reach the planet’s surface.
The new analysis, published in the peer-reviewed journal Earth System Science Data, is the first in a series of periodic evaluations to bridge the gaps between IPCC reports, which have been produced every six years since 1988.
Heat kills
“An annual update of key indicators of global change is critical in helping the international community and countries to keep the urgency of addressing the climate change crisis at the top of the agenda,” said co-author, scientist, and Chilean environment minister Maisa Rojas Corradi.
Even if greenhouse gas emissions have declined, 2021 IPCC report co-chair Valerie Masson-Delmotte called the latest statistics a “wake-up call” before the COP28 session.
“The pace and scale of climate action is not sufficient to limit the escalation of climate-related risks,” she warned.
Since 2000, researchers found a surprising surge in land-only temperatures.
“Land average annual maximum temperatures have warmed by more than half a degree Celsius in the last ten years (1.72C above preindustrial conditions) compared to the first decade of the millennium (1.22C),” the study found.
Recent study suggests that longer, more extreme heat waves will kill people in South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.