This photograph shows pine trees burning during a wild fire in Agia Sotira, east near Athens. Europe braced for new high temperatures on July 18, 2023, under a relentless heatwave and wildfires that have scorched swathes of the Northern Hemisphere, forcing the evacuation of 1,200 children close to a Greek seaside resort.
“Global temperatures are still heading in the wrong direction and faster than ever before. Sadly, this was entirely predictable,” said Professor Piers Foster, of Leeds University, who led the study. The report comes as the world battles to limit global warming to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels and and, if at all possible, 1.5°C.
The analysis showed that the remaining “carbon budget” – how much carbon dioxide can be emitted before committing us to 1.5°C of global warming – is only around 200 billion tonnes, around five years’ worth of current emissions.While most of the human-induced temperature increases came from burning more fossil fuels, a small portion was the result of countries cleaning up air pollution, the report found.
He said that global carbon emissions are “more or less stable now” – rising at around 0.5 to 1 per cent a year compared to about 3 per cent at the turn of the century.