At this year's rate the world will use up its carbon budget for holding warming to 1.5C in 3.5 years, Our World in Data said on November 12.
Only another 150bn tonnes of CO2 can be emitted for an even chance of staying below 1.5C. The world is projected to emit 43bn tonnes in 2026, so if emissions stay at that level the budget will run out around 2030, Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado wrote in a data insight for the Oxford-based research group. "It seems implausible that global emissions will fall quickly enough to avoid this," they wrote.
The budgets for higher temperature limits are bigger but not by enough to change the picture. Holding warming below 1.7C leaves 510bn tonnes, or 12 years of current emissions, and below 2C leaves 1,035bn tonnes, or 24 years, which would be used up by 2051. All the budgets are for a 50% likelihood of staying under each level, and a higher degree of certainty would mean much smaller budgets, the authors said.
The figures land as delegates gather in Antalya for the COP31 climate summit hosted by Turkey, where the split between oil producers and countries pressing to phase out fossil fuels has already surfaced. Brazil, which hosted COP30, has presented a road map for moving away from fossil fuels at the talks. Countries agreed in Paris in 2015 to keep the global temperature rise "well below 2C" and to try to limit it to 1.5C.
The estimates are based on the latest work by the Global Carbon Project, whose Global Carbon Budget 2026 published on November 10 put the remaining 1.5C budget at 150bn tonnes, "less than four years of emissions at the current rate". Total CO2 emissions, including deforestation and other land-use change, are set to hit a record 43.3bn tonnes this year from 42.8bn tonnes in 2025, even though fossil-fuel emissions are projected to fall 0.4% to 38.2bn tonnes as high oil prices from the Iran war cut oil use.
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is set to reach 427.7 parts per million in 2026, 54% above pre-industrial levels, the project said. Each year of emissions at current levels takes another chunk out of every budget, and the warming already locked in is feeding a lengthening disaster season of heatwaves, wildfires and floods around the world.
Remaining CO2 budgets for a 50% chance of staying below 1.5C, 1.7C and 2C, compared with projected 2026 emissions. Source: Our World in Data (CC BY)
This article was produced with the help of the IntelliNews Lambda analytical tool
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