Three years left before best chance of managing global temperature rise is lost
A team of scientists from 17 countries including Ireland have calculated the remaining 'carbon budget' and warn it is set to run out in 2028.
Their warning comes with a slew of new data that shows all the measurements of climate change moving in the wrong direction.
Sea level, for example, has risen twice as fast over the last six years compared to the previous century as warming oceans expand and ice caps melt more rapidly than before.
The surge is revealed in a collaboration by 61 experts from 54 universities and institutes published today.
They warn that the Earth's atmosphere can take only three more years of carbon and other greenhouse gases being pumped out at today's rate before hitting a critical stage.
At that point, the accumulation of warming gases is expected to be beyond what would provide a 50pc chance of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5C.
Preventing temperature rise exceeding 1.5C is the aim of the landmark Paris Agreement signed by almost all the world's nations in 2015.
Technically, the agreement is not broken by breaching 1.5C because it refers to that level of temperature rise being sustained over several decades.
However, the scientists behind the Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC) initiative point out that the 1.5C mark was already exceeded in 2024 and, while this was a record-breaking year, the likelihood of it being repeated sooner and often is increasing all the time.
The IGCC initiative was set up to provide annual updates on climate change in between publication of the flagship reports of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which are produced only every six or seven years.
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Its latest report shows rapid changes since the last report was published in 2021.
Annual emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most common and long-lasting greenhouse gas, rose by 1.3pc.
The amount of CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere increased by 3.1pc while concentration of methane, which has a shorter lifespan but greater short-term warming impact, increased by 3.4pc.
Average temperature rise grew by 13.8pc and the remaining carbon budget dwindled by 74pc – from 500 billion tonnes of CO2 to 130 billion tonnes at the start of 2025.
Sea levels rose by 26mm, counting from 2019, giving an average increase of 4.3mm per year compared to an average of 1.8mm per year over the previous 120 years.
'This seemingly small number is having an outsized impact on low-lying coastal areas, making storm surges more damaging and causing more coastal erosion,' said Dr Aimee Slangen, of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.
'The concerning part is that we know that sea level rise in response to climate change is relatively slow, which means that we have already locked in further increases in the coming years and decades.'
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Irish Independent
a day ago
- Irish Independent
Three years left before best chance of managing global temperature rise is lost
A team of scientists from 17 countries including Ireland have calculated the remaining 'carbon budget' and warn it is set to run out in 2028. Their warning comes with a slew of new data that shows all the measurements of climate change moving in the wrong direction. Sea level, for example, has risen twice as fast over the last six years compared to the previous century as warming oceans expand and ice caps melt more rapidly than before. The surge is revealed in a collaboration by 61 experts from 54 universities and institutes published today. They warn that the Earth's atmosphere can take only three more years of carbon and other greenhouse gases being pumped out at today's rate before hitting a critical stage. At that point, the accumulation of warming gases is expected to be beyond what would provide a 50pc chance of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5C. Preventing temperature rise exceeding 1.5C is the aim of the landmark Paris Agreement signed by almost all the world's nations in 2015. Technically, the agreement is not broken by breaching 1.5C because it refers to that level of temperature rise being sustained over several decades. However, the scientists behind the Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC) initiative point out that the 1.5C mark was already exceeded in 2024 and, while this was a record-breaking year, the likelihood of it being repeated sooner and often is increasing all the time. The IGCC initiative was set up to provide annual updates on climate change in between publication of the flagship reports of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), which are produced only every six or seven years. ADVERTISEMENT Its latest report shows rapid changes since the last report was published in 2021. Annual emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most common and long-lasting greenhouse gas, rose by 1.3pc. The amount of CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere increased by 3.1pc while concentration of methane, which has a shorter lifespan but greater short-term warming impact, increased by 3.4pc. Average temperature rise grew by 13.8pc and the remaining carbon budget dwindled by 74pc – from 500 billion tonnes of CO2 to 130 billion tonnes at the start of 2025. Sea levels rose by 26mm, counting from 2019, giving an average increase of 4.3mm per year compared to an average of 1.8mm per year over the previous 120 years. 'This seemingly small number is having an outsized impact on low-lying coastal areas, making storm surges more damaging and causing more coastal erosion,' said Dr Aimee Slangen, of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. 'The concerning part is that we know that sea level rise in response to climate change is relatively slow, which means that we have already locked in further increases in the coming years and decades.'
RTÉ News
a day ago
- RTÉ News
Climate indicators 'moving in wrong direction'
From carbon pollution to sea-level rise to global heating, the pace and level of key climate change indicators are all in uncharted territory, more than 60 top scientists warned. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation hit a new high in 2024 and averaged, over the last decade, a record 53.6 billion tonnes per year - that is 100,000 tonnes per minute - of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases, they reported in a peer-reviewed update. Earth's surface temperature last year breached 1.5 degrees Celsius for the first time, and the additional CO2 humanity can emit with a two-thirds chance of staying under that threshold long-term - our 1.5C "carbon budget" - will be exhausted in a couple of years, they calculated. Investment in clean energy outpaced investment in oil, gas and coal last year two-to-one, but fossil fuels account for more than 80% of global energy consumption, and growth in renewables still lags behind new demand. Included in the 2015 Paris climate treaty as an aspirational goal, the 1.5C limit has since been validated by science as necessary for avoiding a catastrophically climate-addled world. The hard cap on warming to which nearly 200 nations agreed was "well below" two degrees, commonly interpreted to mean 1.7C to 1.8C. "We are already in crunch time for these higher levels of warming," co-author Joeri Rogelj, a professor of climate science and policy at Imperial College London, told journalists in a briefing. "The next three or four decades is pretty much the timeline over which we expect a peak in warming to happen," he added. 'The wrong direction' No less alarming than record heat and carbon emissions is the gathering pace at which these and other climate indicators are shifting, according to the study, published in Earth System Science Data. Human-induced warming increased over the last decade at a rate "unprecedented in the instrumental record", and well above the 2010-2019 average registered in the UN's most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, in 2021. The new findings - led by the same scientists using essentially the same methods - are intended as an authoritative albeit unofficial update of the benchmark IPCC reports underpinning global climate diplomacy. They should be taken as a reality check by policymakers, the authors suggested. "I tend to be an optimistic person," said lead author Piers Forster, head of the University of Leeds Priestley Centre for Climate Futures. "But if you look at this year's update, things are all moving in the wrong direction," he added. The rate at which sea levels have shot up in recent years is also alarming, the scientists said. After creeping up, on average, well under two millimetres per year from 1901 to 2018, global oceans have risen 4.3mm annually since 2019. What happens next An increase in the ocean watermark of 23cm - the width of a letter-sized sheet of paper - over the last 125 years has been enough to imperil many small island states and hugely amplify the destructive power of storm surges worldwide. An additional 20cm of sea level rise by 2050 would cause one trillion dollars in flood damage annually in the world's 136 largest coastal cities, earlier research has shown. Another indicator underlying all the changes in the climate system is Earth's so-called energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere and the smaller amount leaving it. So far, 91% of human-caused warming has been absorbed by oceans, sparing life on land an unlivable hell-scape. But the planet's energy imbalance has nearly doubled in the last 20 years, and scientists do not know how long oceans will continue to massively soak up this excess heat. Dire future climate impacts worse than what the world has already experienced are already baked in over the next decade or two. But beyond that, the future is in our hands, the scientists made clear. "We will rapidly reach a level of global warming of 1.5C, but what happens next depends on the choices which will be made," said co-author and former IPCC co-chair Valerie Masson-Delmotte. The Paris Agreement's 1.5C target allows for the possibility of ratcheting down global temperatures below that threshold before century's end. Ahead of a critical year-end climate summit in Brazil, international cooperation has been weakened by the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. US President Donald Trump's dismantling of domestic climate policies means the US is likely to fall short on its emissions reduction targets, and could sap the resolve of other countries to deepen their own pledges, experts say.
Irish Examiner
3 days ago
- Irish Examiner
Scientists accuse Ireland and New Zealand of methane ‘accounting trick'
A group of 26 climate scientists from around the world have penned an open letter to New Zealand and Ireland criticising how the methane greenhouse gas is measured. In Ireland's case, it may be a reaction to the programme for government 2025 commitment to "recognise the distinct characteristics of biogenic methane, as described by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and advocate for the accounting of this greenhouse gas to be re-classified at EU and international level". The 26 scientists, in an open letter shared with the London-based Financial Times newspaper, said governments with large livestock sectors, including those of Ireland and New Zealand, are increasingly using a new method for calculating methane's effect on climate change which estimates its contribution to warming based on how emissions are changing relative to a baseline. They specifically accused politicians in New Zealand and Ireland of using an 'accounting trick' to back their sheep and cattle industries. It is believed they are referring to GWP*, a version of the Global Warming Potential formula devised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Other climate researchers, at the University of Oxford, came up with GWP* about six years ago, as a better way for governments to set emissions targets for different greenhouse gases. They said the original GWP100 method did not reliably account for the different impacts of long-lived (such as carbon dioxide) and short-lived (such as methane) gases. They said different lifespans of emissions were crucial to understanding their potential to warm the earth's atmosphere. Carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, and even if its emissions ceases, the warming they caused would continues for centuries. But methane does not accumulate, being relatively rapidly removed naturally from the atmosphere. But GWP100 does not allow for this, according to the GWP* camp. Now, a different scientist at the University of Oxford, Paul Behrens, global professor of environmental change at the university, is one of the 26 whose open letter to the Financial Times warned some governments are misapplying GWP*, to justify allowing emissions to remain flat rather than decline. They warned this could set a precedent, allowing other countries to justify minimal reductions in methane emissions, and jeopardising commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement as well as the Global Methane Pledge launched in 2021. Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at Oxford University's physics department, and one of the scientists behind GWP*, said governments, not scientists, must decide whether farmers should undo past warming from herd growth. He still supports separate targets for methane and carbon dioxide, saying GWP100 overstates the warming impact of constant methane emissions, and is slow to reflect the impact of emission changes. Read More Rise in low-emission slurry spreading puts Ireland on track for ammonia target
