Greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase this year. Atmospheric concentrations are also likely to reach new records, a new research report predicts. But there are also encouraging signs.
Expected changes in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have not yet materialized: a report for 2025 assumes that global greenhouse gas emissions will continue to increase, perhaps by 1.1 percent compared to the previous year. If emissions continue at this rate, the remaining carbon budget to meet the 1.5 degree target set by the Paris Agreement will be exhausted before 2030. An international research group led by Pierre Friedlingstein of the University of Exeter has now presented its report “Global Carbon Budget 2025” in the journal Earth System Science Data.
Based on this, global CO2 emissions will increase to 38.1 billion tonnes this year. In 2024 it will reach 37.8 billion tonnes. There was growth for all fossil fuels: coal (+0.8 percent), petroleum (+1.0 percent) and natural gas (+1.3 percent). Therefore, emissions in America are expected to increase by 1.9 percent compared to the previous year, in India by 1.4 percent, and in China and the European Union by 0.4 percent each. “Given the continued rise in CO2 emissions, it is no longer realistic to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius,” Friedlingstein was quoted as saying in a statement from his university. He and his team of about 100 research institutions have collected extensive data and used it to calculate global developments in computer models.
This report also shows encouraging trends
Therefore, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are expected to increase to 425.7 ppm (parts per Million). In 2024 it reaches a record level of 423.9 ppm, as announced by the World Weather Organization (WMO) a month ago. However, the researchers also saw positive trends that prove, for example, that climate protection is not weakening the economy: “35 countries were able to reduce their emissions while maintaining economic growth,” said co-author Corinne Le Quéré of the British University of East Anglia in Norwich, looking at the period from 2015 to 2024. That was twice as many countries as ten years earlier.
These countries include many European countries, but also Australia, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan. However, Le Quéré stressed that this progress is not large enough to sustainably reduce global emissions given rising energy demand.
Forest deforestation has been reduced significantly
Another positive trend is that land use changes, especially deforestation, have been greatly reduced through environmental policy measures, the report notes. “Deforestation rates in the Amazon region have decreased and reached their lowest level since 2014 this season,” said Julia Pongratz of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, one of the report’s authors. However, devastating fires in 2024 have shown how sensitive ecosystems will be if global warming is not curbed, Pongratz warned.
On the other hand, unfavorable trends impact environmental systems that previously absorbed large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, the so-called sinking of oceans and land: their absorption capacity decreases, mainly due to the impact of climate change. According to scientists’ calculations, the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere by 8 percent since 1960 is due to the fact that land and oceans are increasingly unable to absorb CO2. In the period 2015 to 2024, the absorption capacity of ecosystems on land decreased by 25 percent and the absorption capacity of ecosystems in the ocean by 7.9 percent.
