emissions should reach 40.6 billion tonnes in 2022, up almost 1% compared to 2021, still drawn mainly by the combustion of fossil fuels.
By Audrey Garric
For scientists, this year is the “real test” in order to see if the world has changed the curve. After a historic fall in 2020, linked to the pandemic of COVVI-19, and a strong rebound in 2021, the world emissions of CO 2 remain at record levels in 2022. They show no sign of a “necessary and urgent” decrease to limit global warming to 1.5 ° C compared to the pre -industrial era, the most ambitious objective of the Paris Agreement. At this rate, there is now 50 % chance of exceeding this threshold within nine years.
These are the conclusions of the latest assessment of the Global Carbon Project, a consortium of more than 100 scientists from 80 international laboratories working on the carbon cycle. Their results are published in the journal Earth System Science Data , Friday 11 November, as well as in a Interactive Atlas . They constitute a new alert for the leaders gathered at the World Climate Conference (COP27), in Charm El-Cheikh, Egypt.
This study provides that the global emissions of co 2 – The main greenhouse gas and the first cause of climate change – will reach 40.6 billion tonnes in 2022, bordering on the 2019 record , and up almost 1 % compared to 2021. The major part comes from the combustion of fossil fuels and cement factories, whose discharges should represent 36.6 billion tonnes this year, up 1 % compared at 2021. These emissions collapsed by 5.4 % in 2020, before growing 5.1 % in 2021. The rest of the emissions is linked to changes in land use, in particular deforestation; They seem to have remained stable this year.
China remains the first transmitter
In total, the very high levels of emissions “remain globally stable since 2015”, notes Pierre Friedlingtein, research director at CNRS, the École Normale Supérieure and at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom) , and first author of the study. “We are no longer in a strong growth trajectory each year, but we stay very far from the account.”
“This assessment is bad news. It was very naive to think that the green investments in recovery plans were going to keep the emissions downwards”, reacts Philippe Ciais, research director (CEA) at the laboratory of climate and environmental sciences and one of the study authors. The extrapolations carried out by the study – since the year is not completed – are however to be taken with caution, being more uncertain than during previous balance sheets. “We went from a world where we could predict the shows thanks to many indicators to a chaotic world, shaken by multiple crises and the war in Ukraine, where everything can rock,” he recalls.
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