The Earth’s carbon budget for limiting global temperature rises in line with the Paris Agreement will be exhausted in little more than three years if CO2 emissions continue to increase at their current rate, an international group of experts has warned.
The latest Indicators of Global Climate Change study, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, estimates that the world can only emit 130 billion tonnes of carbon to keep worldwide temperatures within 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels – the benchmark agreed at the 2015 COP global warming summit.
The study, produced by 60 international climate scientists, estimates that the observed global surface temperature rise in 2024 was 1.52°C, of which 1.36°C can be attributed to human activity.
