At current emissions levels, the world will exceed its carbon budget to limit global temperature rise to 1.5-degrees in just five years, according to updated analysis from Carbon Brief. The Paris climate change agreement, adopted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in December set the global climate change goal to keeping temperature-rise “well below” 2-degrees, with an aim of keeping it below 1.5-degrees.
According to data from a 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, and taking into account current emissions, the Carbon Brief analysis “suggest[s] that just five years of CO2 emissions at current levels would be enough to use up the carbon budget for a good chance – a 66% probability – of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5C.”
“As of the beginning of 2011, the carbon budget for a 66% chance of staying below 1.5C was 400bn tonnes. Emissions between 2011 and 2015 mean this has almost halved to 205bn tonnes. The result is that, as of the beginning of 2016, five years and two months of current CO2 emissions would use up the 1.5C budget,” the analysis explains.
