“We have three years of carbon budget left to stay below 1.5°C warming”
We can emit approximately 130 billion tonnes of CO2 before global warming exceeds 1.5°C. At current emission levels, this will happen by the end of 2027. These are findings of a large international research team in a new overview of the most important indicators of climate change. Among them is Aimée Slangen of the NIOZ, who added the aspect of sea level rise.
The study was published on 19 June in the journal Earth System Science Data. It is the third edition of Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC), which shows how the climate system is changing on an annual basis. The researchers followed the same methods as the UN climate panel IPCC as much as possible and made their work accessible via a clear online dashboard. They calculate that, with current emissions, the budget for keeping global warming below 1.6 or 1.7 degrees compared to the start of industrialisation (1850-1900) could be exceeded within nine years.
Sea levels have been rising twice as fast since 2019
This is the first time that NIOZ scientist Aimée Slangen has been involved in the research. She studies sea level rise and added this dimension to the overview. "I have collected satellite data on sea levels over the ocean until the end of 2024. Since 2019, the global average sea level has risen by about 26 millimetres." That is more than double the 1.8 millimetres per year we have seen since 1900.
Slangen: ‘Since 1900, the average sea level worldwide has risen by about 228 mm. This may not seem like much, but it has enormous consequences for low-lying coastal areas, causing storm surges to cause more damage and coastal erosion to increase. With all the consequences that this has for people and ecosystems.’
According to Slangen, it is worrying that sea levels are responding relatively slowly to global warming. The volume of water is increasing as the ice caps melt and the deep ocean warms up. Slangen: ‘We therefore know that we will have to deal with a further rise in the coming years and decades.’
Aimee Slangen (photo: Henny Boogert)