World has 3 years left to stay below 1.5 degrees warming: study

Members of Greenpeace stage a protest at the Chamber Hall during the Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, Monday. The SB62 Climate Change Conference is the pre-sessional meeting for the COP30 Climate Change Conference to be held in Belem, Brazil, in November. EPA-Yonhap

BONN, Germany — Only three years are left to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius if climate-harming emissions remain at their current level, according to study by a team of over 60 international scientists published on Thursday.

Scientists found that the carbon budget will be exhausted in a little more than three years — meaning the amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted by humanity to permanently keep warning to 1.5 degrees, the limit set by the Paris Agreement to try and avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

The carbon budgets to limit global warming to 1.6 or 1.7 degrees could be surpassed within nine years, according to the annual Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC) study presented at the U.N. Climate Conference in the western German city of Bonn.

"Both warming levels and rates of warming are unprecedented. Continued record-high emissions of greenhouse gases mean more of us are experiencing unsafe levels of climate impacts," said lead author Piers Forster.

"Climate policies and pace of climate action are not keeping up with what's needed to address the ever-growing impacts."

Sea levels rise by over 20 centimetres

Sea levels rose by around 26 millimeters between 2019 and 2024, according to the study, meaning long-term sea level rise has more than doubled since the beginning of the 20th century.

"Since 1900, the global mean sea level has risen by around 228 mm," said Dr Aimee Slangen, research leader at the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research.

"This seemingly small number is having an outsized impact on low-lying coastal areas, making storm surges more damaging and causing more coastal erosion, posing a threat to humans and coastal ecosystems," she added.

"The concerning part is that we know that sea-level rise in response to climate change is relatively slow, which means that we have already locked in further increases in the coming years and decades."

The study conducted by a team comprising over 60 international researchers aims to present the latest scientific findings on climate change and the human impact on the ecosystem.