Humanity has only 3 years left to contain warming to 1.5ºC, scientists warn

• The so-called carbon budget, which estimates the emissions that can be thrown away even to maintain a stable climate, is rapidly being depleted due to the current rate of CO₂ emissions
• Almost 90% of the rise in temperature after the Industrial Revolution is due to human activities

At the current rate of CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere, humanity only has three years to contain global warming at a safe level; that is, below 1.5ºC compared to pre-industrial levels. This is according to the third report ‘Global Climate Change Indicators’, carried out by a team of more than 60 scientists from 17 countries and published this Thursday in the journal ‘Earth Sistema Science Data’. The analysis addresses the so-called carbon budget, i.e. the amount of CO₂ that can be released into the atmosphere before global warming is exceeded above 1.5ºC, a bar that sets devastating climate effects. The new estimates on the carbon budget (the maximum allowable emissions) for 1.5ºC warming are 130 gigatonnes of CO₂, an amount that would be depleted in just over three years at the current rate of carbon dioxide emissions. And if the calculation is to estimate how much time would be left to avoid a warming of 1.6 or 1.7ºC, then that threshold would be exceeded in just nine years. This study provides updates on the main climate indicators reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in order to provide the latest evidence on how the climate system is changing and the influence that human activities have on it. In 2020, the IPCC calculated that the remaining carbon budget was around 500 gigatons of carbon dioxide. At the beginning of 2023, the figure fell by half and in 2024 it stood at 200 gigatons, corresponding to five years of emissions at current levels.

Continue reading news in La Vanguardia