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June 8, 2023

Human-caused warming to surpass Paris Agreement limit by 2037, analysis finds

Human-caused global warming is set to surpass 2.7° Fahrenheit (1.5° Celsius) by the year 2037, overshooting an international goal beyond which severe climate disruptions may become the norm, according to a new analysis from 50 climate scientists. If humans continue to emit carbon dioxide at the current rate, the study determined that the planet may reach that warming threshold by 2037.

“This is unprecedented in anything we have seen historically,” said Piers Forster, a professor at the University of Leeds and an author on the paper. Forster has also authored multiple climate reports with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), widely regarded as the international authority on climate science.

The 2016 Paris Agreement, which has been signed by nearly every country in the world, set an international goal to halt warming at 2.7° Fahrenheit. Beyond this point, scientists believe the effects of climate change will escalate, with widespread die-offs of coral reefs, common extreme heat waves, and destructive flooding of coastal cities. The study found that the global increase in temperatures has reached 2.05° Fahrenheit over the past decade.

The planet is also warming increasingly faster, with temperatures rising by an unprecedented 0.36° Fahrenheit since 2013, according to the new paper, published today in the journal Earth Systems Science Data.

May 19, 2023

Vast majority of global methane emissions go unregulated, says new study

By Grace van Deelen

Governments around the world are failing to effectively regulate and mitigate harmful emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas with a climate warming potential more than 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide, according to research published Friday.

Only 13% of global emissions from methane are covered by existing public mitigation policies, the researchers reported in the journal One Earth.

“Significant and underexplored [methane] mitigation opportunities exist,” the authors wrote.

The research comes on the heels of a report issued Thursday from the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) showing that methane emissions from just 1,100 US landfills have a climate-warming effect equivalent to the yearly emissions of 66 million gas-powered vehicles.

Methane makes up about 12% of US greenhouse gas emissions stemming from human activities, including agricultural operations, fossil fuel extraction and use, waste management practices, and decay of organic waste in municipal solid waste landfills. Agriculture is the largest single US source of methane emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Global methane emissions are currently rising faster than at any point since the 1980s. To try to keep global warming from exceeding the warming limit of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit set by the Paris Agreement, global methane emissions must be reduced by at least 40-45% of 2020 levels by 2030, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.