“Rates of Warming are Unprecedented” Scientists Warn in Latest Dire Assessment

Unless carbon emissions and fossil fuel use are slashed drastically, global heating could surpass the limits set out in the Paris Agreement.

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As country delegates gather in Bonn, Germany for the annual subsidiary bodies session of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – a conference that helps shape the agenda for the year’s upcoming UN climate summit, scientists have published the latest dire assessment of global climate change indicators. And unsurprisingly, the trends are all pointing in the wrong direction, towards a dangerous future marked by climate chaos and instability.

“Our third annual edition of Indicators of Global Climate Change shows that both warming levels and rates of warming are unprecedented,” said Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds and lead author of the study. “Continued record-high emissions of greenhouse gases mean more of us are experiencing unsafe levels of climate impacts.”

The study, published June 19 in the journal Earth System Science Data, provides an updated snapshot on the state of the climate system. More than 60 scientists from around the world worked on the report.

Alarmingly, the study finds that indicators such as Earth energy imbalance and sea level rise have increased since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) published in 2021. Earth energy imbalance is a measure of how much heat is accumulating in the climate system, and that value has increased 25 percent since AR6.

Since the vast majority, over 90 percent, of the accumulating heat is taken up by the oceans, there has been an accelerating rise in ocean temperatures and sea levels.

“Warmer waters lead to rising sea levels and intensified weather extremes, and can have devastating impacts on marine ecosystems and the communities that rely on them,” said Karina Von Schuckmann, senior advisor in ocean science for policy at Mercator Ocean International and one of the study authors. “In 2024, the ocean reached record values globally.”

Overall, the pace of human-induced warming has roughly doubled since the 1980s, reaching a rate of 0.27°C increase per decade over the period 2015 – 2024, which the study says is “unprecedented in the instrumental record.” Over the last 10 years, which have also seen the 10 hottest years on record so far, annual CO2 emissions form human activities have averaged 53 billion metric tons.

“The bottom line is that until we shift our energy supply to renewable, clean technologies and our land use practices to sustainable methods, atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will continue to rise,” William Lamb, senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said during a briefing on the report in Bonn.

Under the Paris Climate Agreement established in 2015, nations pledged to take action to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C and to strive to not exceed 1.5°C. But so far, they have not lived up to this promise. The 1.5°C aspiration has all but evaporated, and on the current trajectory the world is set to blow past the 2°C mark. According to the study, the world has at most three to five years left before the 1.5°C target, which refers to temperature rise over multiple years, is surpassed. Last year was the first full year in which global average temperature exceeded 1.5°C.

Bill Hare, a climate scientist and head of the think tank Climate Analytics, said this should be a “clear red warning signal.”

“What we know from the science is that unless we halve emissions by 2030, we’re not going to be able to get anywhere close to the Paris Agreement’s limit,” he said during a separate briefing event in Bonn. “Overshooting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 °C target,” he said, would be “a very serious political failure.”

The study emphasizes that “this is a critical decade.” Decisions made now and over the next few years will have lasting repercussions.

“A failure to act decisively on emissions in the next few years will leave current and future generations with intensifying and dramatic climate change impacts,” Lamb said.

Tracy Carty, climate politics expert at Greenpeace International, said the latest scientific climate assessment “is yet another dire warning that must spark a response.”

“Talk must turn into action. But here in Bonn that urgency seems to be lacking. Our backs are against the wall and governments need to step up,” Carty said. “That means unveiling bold and ambitious 2035 climate action plans that rapidly push ahead with the phase out of coal, oil and gas – especially in rich developed countries who need to move the fastest.”

Yet instead of phasing out fossil fuels, countries like the United States are working to expand them. According to a new analysis from Oil Change International, just four countries – the United States, Canada, Norway, and Australia – are responsible for nearly 70 percent of projected oil and gas expansion through 2035, and the US is leading the pack on this expansion.

The US, Hare observed, is “supporting and promoting the further development of oil and gas nearly everywhere.”

Under President Trump, the US has also moved to immediately pull out of the Paris Agreement. For the first time in decades the US has skipped the mid-year climate conference in Bonn, and the Trump administration may also be a no-show at this year’s UN climate summit, which will be held in November in Brazil.

Even with the US absent, climate advocates and scientists are still pushing for the COP30 summit to prioritize the phaseout of fossil fuels. Hare said he delivered a petition the other day signed by over 250 scientists, addressed to Brazil’s president, highlighting the urgency of climate action and requesting that the transition away from fossil fuels become a top priority at the upcoming summit.

“As we rapidly approach the 10-year anniversary of the Paris Agreement, history will remember this moment when leaders will either decide to do what is scientifically and morally right, or if they keep the status-quo,” the scientists write in their petition. “The time for courageous leadership, backed by science - is now.”