Earth has 11 years to cut emissions to avoid the worst climate scenarios, report says

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Smokestacks belch in Weihai, in China’s Shandong province, in 2019. China is set to surpass pre-pandemic levels of carbon dioxide emissions this year.

Zhang Peng/LightRocket via Getty Images

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Zhang Peng/LightRocket via Getty Images

The COP26 summit
The U.N. says climate impacts are getting worse faster than the world is adapting

When the first report was issued in 2015, scientists projected that the Earth had a 20-year time horizon before emissions would result in warming above the set limit by the end of the century. But the output of greenhouse gases has risen even faster than expected, with half of that budget expended in just the past six years.

At current levels of emissions, there’s a 50% chance that a rise in temperatures of 1.5 C by the end of this century will be locked in by 2033. With no reductions, more dire scenarios are equally likely — with a 1.7 degrees C increase inevitable by 2042 and a 2 degrees C jump unavoidable by 2054.

Global average temperatures over the last 150 years have risen about 1.1 degrees C (or about 2 degrees F), intensifying wildfires, floods and hurricanes worldwide.

«Global fossil CO2 emissions (excluding cement carbonation) in 2021 are returning towards their 2019 levels after decreasing [5.4%] in 2020,» the report states.

The authors note that reaching net zero CO2 emissions by 2050, which is the goal of those pushing climate action at the Glasgow summit, «entails cutting total anthropogenic [human caused] CO2 emissions» by an amount «comparable to the decrease during 2020.»

Emissions from China, which in recent years has surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, have exceeded pre-pandemic levels, growing by 5.5% according to data in the latest report. India’s emissions have increased 4.4%.

However, there are a few encouraging signs in the report, notably that emissions have decreased over the past decade in 23 countries whose economies were growing before the coronavirus pandemic — including the U.S. and the United Kingdom. The list, which account for about a quarter of global CO2 emissions, also contains several wealthy nations in Europe, as well as Japan.