Human-caused global warming is set to surpass 2.7° Fahrenheit (1.5° Celsius) by the year 2037, overshooting an international goal beyond which severe climate disruptions may become the norm, according to a new analysis from 50 climate scientists.
“This is unprecedented in anything we have seen historically,” said Piers Forster, a professor at the University of Leeds and an author on the paper. Forster has also authored multiple climate reports with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), widely regarded as the international authority on climate science.
The 2016 Paris Agreement, which has been signed by nearly every country in the world, set an international goal to halt warming at 2.7° Fahrenheit. Beyond this point, scientists believe the effects of climate change will escalate, with widespread die-offs of coral reefs, common extreme heat waves, and destructive flooding of coastal cities. The study found that the global increase in temperatures has reached 2.05° Fahrenheit over the past decade.
The planet is also warming increasingly faster, with temperatures rising by an unprecedented 0.36° Fahrenheit since 2013, according to the new paper, published today in the journal Earth Systems Science Data.
“This is the critical decade for climate change,” said Forster in a statement. “Decisions made now will have an impact on how much temperatures will rise and the degree and severity of impacts we will see as a result.”
The scientists’ analysis also gives an update on humanity’s remaining carbon budget — the amount of greenhouse gas emissions humans can still emit to stay under the 2.7° Fahrenheit limit. According to the paper, the remaining carbon budget has halved since the IPCC calculated it in 2020. Now, humans have just 250 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide left to emit, compared with the 500 gigatonnes available just three years ago — meaning ‘business as usual’ activities are expected to exhaust the carbon budget by 2029.
“If we don’t want to see the [IPCC] goal disappearing in our rearview mirror, the world must work much harder and urgently at bringing emissions down,” Forster said in a statement.
Greenhouse gas emissions reached an all-time high over the last decade. In 2021, emissions rose to over 54 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. The remaining carbon budget is “very small” in the context of humanity’s yearly emissions, said Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science at Imperial College London and an author on the paper. Rogelj is also an author of IPCC reports.
Greenhouse gas emissions are now on par with the emissions in 2019, just before the coronavirus pandemic caused worldwide lockdowns, he said.
As the climate changes more quickly, scientists need to keep up with their analyses, too, said Forster. While the IPCC reports valuable and in-depth climate information, it only releases its major assessments every five to ten years. Today’s new research is an attempt to fill in the gaps left by the IPCC’s assessment cycle.
The new paper is part of an initiative launched today led by Forster and the University of Leeds, called the Indicators of Global Climate Change Project, which aims to update climate analyses each year to keep people informed about the climate crisis.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.