New research from the Global Carbon Budget team has revealed that global carbon emissions from fossil fuels have risen again in 2023.
Fossil fuel carbon emissions have been projected by the Global Carbon Budget team to be up by 1.1% from 2022.
In regions such as Europe and the US, fossil fuel carbon emissions are falling. However, overall, they are rising and action to cut emissions is not happening fast enough to prevent dangerous climate change.
The Global Carbon Budget report projected that emissions from land-use change are to decrease slightly but are too high to be offset by current levels of reforestation and afforestation.
In 2023, it is estimated that total global carbon emissions will be 40.9 billion tonnes.
This is around the same as 2022 levels and part of a ten-year plateau – far from the reduction that is needed to meet global targets.
“The impacts of climate change are evident all around us, but action to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels remains painfully slow,” said Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, who led the study.
“It now looks inevitable we will overshoot the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement, and leaders meeting at COP28 will have to agree rapid cuts in fossil fuel emissions even to keep the 2°C target alive.”
Will the 1.5°C threshold be crossed?
The study estimated the remaining carbon budget before the 1.5°C target is breached consistently over multiple years.
The Global Carbon Budget team believes that at the current emissions level, there is a 50% chance global warming will exceed 1.5°C consistently in about seven years.
This estimate is subject to large uncertainties, mainly due to the uncertainty of the additional warming coming from non-fossil fuel carbon emissions.
However, the report shows that the remaining carbon budget is running out fast.
Professor Corinne Le Quéré, Royal Society Research Professor at UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences said: “The latest CO2 data shows that current efforts are not profound or widespread enough to put global emissions on a downward trajectory towards net zero, but some trends in emissions are beginning to budge, showing climate policies can be effective.
“Global emissions at today’s level are rapidly increasing the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere, causing additional climate change and increasingly serious and growing impacts.
“All countries need to decarbonise their economies faster than they are at present to avoid the worse impacts of climate change.”
Key findings from the 2023 Global Carbon Budget report
Other key findings include:
- Regional trends dramatically vary. Emissions in 2023 are projected to increase in India and China and decline in the EU and the US.
- Global emissions from coal, oil, and gas are projected to increase.
- Fossil fuel carbon emissions from fires in 2023 have been larger than average due to an extreme wildfire season in Canada.
Produced by an international team of more than 120 scientists, the Global Carbon Budget report provides an annual update built upon established methodologies in a fully transparent manner.
