All climate change indicators worsening, scientists behind new public data project warn

The chances of global temperature rise being maintained within coping levels have plummeted in the last three years.

A new assessment led by British and Irish scientists shows all the key measurements of climate change have rapidly worsened.

Human-induced warming averaged 1.14 degrees over the past decade, moving ever closer to the 1.5 degree threshold scientists have warned must not be breached.

A record level of greenhouse gas is still being emitted, hitting 54 billion tonnes a year.

The remaining carbon budget – the maximum emissions remaining to retain at least a 50pc chance of holding temperature rise to 1.5 degrees – has halved in three years.

The assessment is the work of 50 scientists who have committed to publishing more regular updates of climate change indicators than the current United Nations process provides.

Their ‘Indicators of Global Climate Change Project’ will provide at least annual updates in a publicly accessible website.

The UN’s climate science panel, the IPCC, pulls together thousands of research papers for its assessments and it can take five to seven years to complete a new assessment.

With world leaders failing to honour pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the group behind the Indicators project say more frequent reminders are needed.

Professor Peter Thorne, director of the ICARUS Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University, said:

“It is critical that policy makers and the general public be made aware of how quickly we are changing the climate through our collective activities.

“Already since the IPCC assessment in 2021, key numbers have changed markedly and we remain well off track globally to avert warming above 1.5 degrees.”

Examples of how fast the situation is deteriorating come from comparing the IPCC’s 2021 report with current data.

The 2021 report showed annual emissions from 2010-2019 averaged 53 billion tonnes. Current data says from 2012-2021, they averaged 54 billion.

In 2021, human-caused temperature rise was put at 1.07 degrees but is now 1.14 degrees.

The remaining carbon budget as measured in 2021 was 500 billion tonnes but is now put at 250 billion tonnes.

The new indicators are published as climate experts meet in Bonn to prepare the ground for the next major UN climate summit, COP28, which takes place in Dubai in December.

A key feature of the summit will be a ‘global stocktake’ of progress towards keeping warming to 1.5 degrees.

Indicators project coordinator, Professor Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at Leeds University, said there was evidence that the rate of increase of greenhouse gas emissions had slowed, although not yet levelled off or reversed.

He said decisions made now would be critical in influencing the trends for decades to come.

“We need to be nimble-footed in the face of climate change. We need to change policy and approaches in the light of the latest evidence about the state of the climate system.

“Time is no longer on our side. Access to up-to-date informaiton is vitally important.”

The Indicators website went live this morning at www.igcc.earth.

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