The Global Carbon Project’s recent analysis on current carbon dioxide emissions published in the latest issue of Nature Climate Change underscores the necessity for action in emission reduction. The commentary’s authors concluded that the rapid growth in fossil fuel emissions makes a global average temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) inevitable. It is this 20 Celsius global average surface temperature limit that was agreed to during the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. And it is the goal of the in-progress 18th annual United Nations climate-change summit in Doha to create a world treaty, which would be signed in 2015, to slow global green-house gas emissions so that global average surface does not rise by 20 Celsius.
The commentary conclusions put this goal in question. As the authors state in the abstract, “The latest carbon dioxide emissions continue to track the high end of emission scenarios, making it even less likely global warming will stay below 2 °C. A shift to a 2 °C pathway requires immediate significant and sustained global mitigation, with a probable reliance on net negative emissions in the longer term.”
The commentary’s abstract is found at Nature Climate Change – The challenge to keep global warming below 2 °C.