Carbon Emissions Exacerbate the Global Warming Crisis

Carbon Emissions Exacerbate the Global Warming Crisis

Climate Change Indicators Reach Unprecedented Levels

More than 60 leading scientists warned that the pace and level of key climate change indicators, from carbon pollution to sea level rise to global warming, are all at an unprecedented level.

More than 60 leading scientists warned that the pace and level of key climate change indicators, from carbon pollution to sea level rise to global warming, are all at an unprecedented level. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation reached a new record high in 2024, and over the past decade, they averaged a record 53.6 billion tons annually—100,000 tons per minute—of carbon dioxide or its equivalent in other gases, according to experts.

Scientists have concluded that warming exceeded the 1.5°C threshold for the first time last year, and that the additional carbon dioxide that humans can emit, with a two-thirds chance of staying below that limit in the long term, will be exhausted within two years. According to the study published in the journal Earth System Science Data, the accelerating pace at which these climate indicators are changing is as alarming as the record-breaking rise in temperatures and carbon emissions.

Human-caused warming has increased over the past decade at a rate "unprecedented in the instrumental record," far higher than the 2010-2019 average recorded in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, published in 2021. Scientists also confirmed that the rate of sea level rise in recent years is also alarming. After gradually rising at a rate of much less than two millimeters per year between 1901 and 2018, sea levels have risen by 4.3 millimeters per year since 2019.

Another indicator underlying all changes in the climate system is the Earth's energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy entering the atmosphere and the lesser amount escaping. To date, the oceans have absorbed 91% of the warming caused by human activities.

However, the Earth's energy imbalance has nearly doubled over the past 20 years, and scientists don't know how long the oceans will continue to absorb this massive excess heat. It is increasingly clear that the world will experience the most severe consequences of climate change in the next decade or two, worse than it has experienced to date.