Amid Earth’s heat records, annual carbon emissions still inching upward

Even as Earth sets new heat records, humanity this year is pumping 330 million tons (300 million metric tons) more carbon dioxide into the air by burning fossil fuels than it did last year.

This year the world is on track to put 41.2 billion tons (37.4 billion metric tons) of the main heat-trapping gas into the atmosphere. It’s a 0.8 percent increase from 2023, according to Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who track emissions. Several United Nations reports say the globe must cut emissions by 42 percent by 2030 to possibly limit warming to an internationally agreed-upon threshold.

This year’s pollution increase isn’t quite as large as last year’s 1.4 percent jump, scientists said while presenting the data at the United Nations climate talks in Azerbaijan.

If the world continues burning fossil fuels at today’s level, it has six years before passing 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, the limit agreed to at the 2015 climate talks in Paris, said study coauthor Stephen Sitch. The Earth is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 Fahrenheit), according to the United Nations.

“We clearly are not doing enough on a global scale to reduce emissions. It’s as simple as that,” said study coauthor Mike O’Sullivan, a University of Exeter climate scientist. “We need to massively increase ambition and actually just think outside the box of how we can change things, not be so tied to fossil fuel interests.”

Scientists used reported emissions from rich countries and oil industry data, O’Sullivan said. The 2024 figure includes projections for the last couple months or so. The Global Carbon Project team released figures for the four biggest carbon emitters—China, the United States, India, and Europe. It also produced more detailed and final figures for about 200 countries for 2023.

The continued rise in carbon emissions is mostly from the developing world and China. Many analysts had been hoping that China—by far the world’s biggest annual carbon polluting nation with 32 percent of the emissions—would have peaked its carbon dioxide emissions by now. Instead China’s emissions rose 0.2 percent from 2023, with coal pollution up 0.3 percent, Global Carbon Project calculated. But it could drop to zero in the next two months and is “basically flat,” O’Sullivan said.

Total carbon emissions—which include fossil fuel pollution and land use changes such as deforestation—are basically flat because land emissions are declining, the scientists said. That’s an important and encouraging milestone amid bad news, said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann.