Santander (EFE).- Global warming caused by man continues to increase at an “unprecedented rate” because greenhouse gas emissions are “at their highest point” in history, a team of fifty scientists has warned.
The article with the results obtained has been published in the journal Earth System Science Data.
In the document, scientists, among them the Minister of the Environment of Chile, Maisa Rojas, or the director of the Institute of Physics of Cantabria, José Manuel Gutiérrez, reveal how the key climate indicators have changed since the publication of the Sixth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2021.
The “Global Climate Change Indicators” project is coordinated by Professor Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Center for Climate Futures in Leeds, who sees this decade as “critical for climate change.”
Highest emission levels in history
Forster has claimed that warming rates are “at a long-term high” because levels of greenhouse gas emissions are “the highest ever,” with human activity equivalent to 54 gigatons of carbon dioxide. carbon released into the atmosphere on average each year.
However, according to the study, reported by the University of Cantabria in a statement, there is evidence that the rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions has decreased.
Human-induced warming, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels, has averaged 1.14 degrees over the past decade (2013-2022), above pre-industrial levels.
This is a higher figure than the 1.07 degrees registered between 2010 and 2019, which is why it is growing at a rate of more than 0.2 ºC per decade.
It has positively reduced the burning of coal, but it has had a short-term negative cost, because it has contributed to global warming by reducing particulate pollution in the air, which has a cooling effect.
carbon budget
It also highlights the decrease in the remaining carbon budget, which is an estimate of the amount of carbon that can be released into the atmosphere to have a chance of keeping global temperature rise to within 1.5 degrees.
In 2020, the IPCC estimated the remaining carbon budget to be about 500 gigatons of carbon dioxide.
As of early 2023, the number was about half due to the combination of continued emissions since 2020 and updated estimates of human-caused warming.
“If we do not want the 1.5 degree target to recede in the rear-view mirror, the world must work much harder and urgently to reduce emissions,” Forster added.
The Chilean Minister of the Environment, Maisa Rojas, who signs this study, sees an annual update of climate change indicators as “fundamental” and advocates placing it “at the top of the agendas.”
Pablo Garcia Hermida