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Three years left to limit warming to 1.5C, leading scientists warn - 2025

The Earth could be doomed to breach the symbolic 1.5C warming limit in as little as three years at current levels of carbon dioxide emissions.

That's the stark warning from more than 60 of the world's leading climate scientists in the most up-to-date assessment of the state of global warming.

Nearly 200 countries agreed to try to limit global temperature rises to 1.5C above levels of the late 1800s in a landmark agreement in 2015, with the aim of avoiding some of the worst impacts of climate change.

But countries have continued to burn record amounts of coal, oil and gas and chop down carbon-rich forests - leaving that international goal in peril.

Climate change has already worsened many weather extremes - such as the UK's 40C heat in July 2022 - and has rapidly raised global sea levels, threatening coastal communities.

"Things are all moving in the wrong direction," said lead author Prof Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds.

"We're seeing some unprecedented changes and we're also seeing the heating of the Earth and sea-level rise accelerating as well."

These changes "have been predicted for some time and we can directly place them back to the very high level of emissions", he added.

US Reverses Course under Trump and other Countries follow suit, threatening the Planet - 2025

How Trump's 'drill, baby, drill' pledge is affecting other countries

Getty Images US President Donald Trump points after speaking during the Unleashing American Energy event at the Department of Energy in Washington DC, US

Trump has said the US's oil and gas will be sold all over the world

The UN climate summit in the United Arab Emirates in 2023 ended with a call to "transition away from fossil fuels". It was applauded as a historic milestone in global climate action.

Trees are carbon and methane sinks - we need billions more trees!

Trees might not be acting in the way we thought - this forest fitted with pipes can tell us why

Thomas Downes A photo looking up at trees with sunlight peaking through (Credit: Thomas Downes)

By simulating the future atmosphere, scientists hope to understand whether trees will continue to act as the lungs of the planet.

"The oak is the queen of her domain," says Rob MacKenzie as he gestures towards a giant towering above us. This oak tree has stood in this very spot since long before he or I walked the Earth. 

METHANE - the most potent Greenhouse Warming Gas

Methane accounts for more than one-quarter of the anthropogenic radiative imbalance since the pre-industrial age. Its largest sources include both natural and human-mediated pathways: wetlands, fossil fuels (oil/gas and coal), agriculture (livestock and rice cultivation), landfills, and fires. The dominant loss of methane is through oxidation in the atmosphere via the hydroxyl radical (OH). Apart from its radiative effects, methane impacts background tropospheric ozone levels, the oxidative capacity of the atmosphere, and stratospheric water vapor. As such, changes in the abundance of atmospheric methane can have profound impacts on the future state of our climate.

 

2012 Concentrations of warming gases breaks record

The WMO says that fossil fuel activities such as oil refining are driving atmospheric levels of CO2 to record highs. The levels of gases in the atmosphere that drive global warming increased to a record high in 2012. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), atmospheric CO2 grew more rapidly last year than its average rise over the past decade. Concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide also broke previous records. Thanks to carbon dioxide and these other gases, the WMO says the warming effect on our climate has increased by almost a third since 1990. The WMO's annual greenhouse gas bulletin measures concentrations in the atmosphere, not emissions on the ground. Carbon dioxide is the most important of the gases that they track, but only about half of the CO2 that's emitted by human activities remains in the atmosphere, with the rest being absorbed by the plants, trees, the land and the oceans. Since the start of the industrial era in 1750, global average levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by 141%. According to the WMO there were 393.1 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2012, an increase of 2.2ppm over 2011. This was above the yearly average of 2.02ppm over the past decade. "The observations highlight yet again how heat-trapping gases from human activities have upset the natural balance of our atmosphere and are a major contribution to climate change," said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.

Arctic methane 'time bomb'

Arctic melt: Increasing temperatures in the Arctic region are reducing sea ice cover and increasing the possibility of methane leaching from the sea bed. Scientists say that the release of large amounts of methane from thawing permafrost in the Arctic could have huge economic impacts for the world. The researchers estimate that the climate effects of the release of this gas could cost $60 trillion (£39 trillion), roughly the size of the global economy in 2012. The impacts are most likely to be felt in developing countries they say. Scientists have had concerns about the impact of rising temperatures on permafrost for many years. Large amounts of methane are concentrated in the frozen Arctic tundra but are also found as semi-solid gas hydrates under the sea. Price of gas Previous work has shown that the diminishing ice cover in the East Siberian sea is allowing the waters to warm and the methane to leach out. Scientists have found plumes of the gas up to a kilometre in diameter rising from these waters. In this study, the researchers have attempted to put an economic price on the climate damage that these emissions of methane could cause. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, even though it lasts less than a decade in the atmosphere.

Methane greenhouse gas to be released from Antartica

Antarctic may host methane stores

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Ancient organic matter could be converted to methane by microbes.
 

Large volumes of methane - a potent greenhouse gas - could be locked beneath the ice-covered regions of Antarctica, according to a new study.

Arctic melt releasing ancient methane increasing rate of global warming

Scientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere. The methane has been trapped by ice, but is able to escape as the ice melts. Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this ancient gas could have a significant impact on climate change. Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and levels are rising after a few years of stability. There are many sources of the gas around the world, some natural and some man-made, such as landfill waste disposal sites and farm animals. Tracking methane to these various sources is not easy. But the researchers on the new Arctic project, led by Katey Walter Anthony from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF), were able to identify long-stored gas by the ratio of different isotopes of carbon in the methane molecules. Using aerial and ground-based surveys, the team identified about 150,000 methane seeps in Alaska and Greenland in lakes along the margins of ice cover. Local sampling showed that some of these are releasing the ancient methane, perhaps from natural gas or coal deposits underneath the lakes, whereas others are emitting much younger gas, presumably formed through decay of plant material in the lakes. "We observed most of these cryosphere-cap seeps in lakes along the boundaries of permafrost thaw and in moraines and fjords of retreating glaciers," they write, emphasising the point that warming in the Arctic is releasing this long-stored carbon.