Which gas is responsible for global warming

Credit: Lawrence Wee/Shutterstock Greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high, with yearly emissions equivalent to 54 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Humanity has caused surface temperatures to warm by 1.14°C since the late 1800s—and this warming is increasing at an unprecedented rate of over 0.2°C per decade. The highest temperatures recorded over land (what climate scientists refer to as maximum land surface temperatures) are increasing twice as fast. And it's these temperatures that are most relevant to the record heat people feel or whether wildfires spawn. These changes mean that the remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C—the amount of carbon dioxide global society can still emit and keep a 50% chance of holding temperature rise to 1.5°C—is now only around 250 billion tons. At current emission levels, this will run out in less than six years. These are the findings of We are launching an initiative called We use rigorous methods based on those established in the comprehensive United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments. In a rapidly changing world where policies can shift quickly, this leaves an information gap: trusted indicators on the state of the climate have been missing from annual UN climate negotiations. In this first report, we explained how much things have changed since the last comprehensive assessment by the IPCC (the sixth assessment report, or AR6) which evaluated data up to 2019. To evaluate how much of the observed temp...

An update of the key indicators of climate change since 2019 has found that human-induced warming is increasing at an unprecedented rate of 0.2C per decade, and that annual greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high. Fifty leading climate scientists from around the world, led by the University of Leeds and including those at the ICARUS Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University, came together under The Global Climate Change Project to produce a report. The The scientist who wrote the report said it is critical that policymakers and the public are made aware of how quickly we are changing the climate and that the scale and pace of climate action has been insufficient. Despite the focus and pledges about climate action all over the world, it shows annual average greenhouse gas emissions have grown to a record 54 billion tonnes per year. That is up one billion tonnes since 2019. It says human-induced warming, largely caused by burning fossil fuels, averaged 1.14C over the past decade. That is up from the 1.07C estimate in the IPCC report just three years ago. The overall pace of global warming, according to scientists, has now accelerated to 0.2C per decade. The fact that we are warmer than expected, while the volume of climate-warming gases in the atmosphere is higher than predicted, suggests that we are now within five years of exceeding the amount of carbon that we can add to the atmosphere before the key 1.5C of warming is likely to be exceeded. The report also ...

Greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise, despite a sharp fall in 2020 when Covid lockdowns were in place in many countries. Photograph: PNK Photo/Getty Images/iStockphoto Greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise, despite a sharp fall in 2020 when Covid lockdowns were in place in many countries. Photograph: PNK Photo/Getty Images/iStockphoto Greenhouse gas emissions have reached an all-time high, threatening to push the world into “unprecedented” levels of global heating, scientists have warned. The world is rapidly running out of “carbon budget”, the amount of carbon dioxide that can be poured into the atmosphere if we are to stay within the vital threshold of 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures, according to a Only about 250bn tonnes of carbon dioxide can now be emitted, to avoid Prof Piers Forster, the director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures at the University of Leeds, and He said the rate of annual increase in emissions had slowed down, but far stronger action was needed. “We need to change policy and approaches in light of the latest evidence about the state of the climate system. Time is no longer on our side,” he said. Sultan Al Jaber, the president-designate of Cop28, will arrive at Bonn on Thursday, under pressure to produce a plan for the talks that will achieve the “course correction” he has called for. While heading the talks, Al Jaber has retained his role as head of UAE’s national oil company, Adnoc, which is planning to increase...

Some greenhouse gases occur naturally and enter the atmosphere as a result of both natural processes (such as decomposition of organic matter) and human activity (such as burning fossil fuels and agriculture). Greenhouse gases that occur both naturally and from human activities include water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO 2), methane (CH 4), nitrous oxide (N 2O) and ozone (O 3). Other greenhouse gases have essentially no natural sources, but are side products of industrial processes or manufactured for human purposes such as cleaning agents, refrigerants, and electrical insulators. These include the fluorinated gases: chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HCFCs), bromofluorocarbons (halons), perfluorcarbons, PFCs, nitrogen trifluoride, NF 3, and sulfur hexafluoride, SF 6. These gases contribute to atmospheric warming when they absorb infrared radiation emitted by the solar-warmed Earth and transfer their extra energy to the surrounding atmospheric gases. The figure shows that the temperature at the surface of the Earth has increased by about 0.9 °C during the past century with more than half the change since about 1980. The temperature can change only if there is a change in the Earth’s energy budget as the balance between the energies of incoming and outgoing radiation is upset. Upsetting the Earth’s energy balance can be the result of changes in many factors, including energy from the sun, greenhouse gases, and cloud cover. A change...

• Methane (CH 4), the primary component of natural gas, is responsible for more than 25 per cent of the warming we are experiencing today. (EDF) • Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, with a Global Warming Potential more than 80 times greater than that of carbon dioxide (CO 2) during the 20 years after it is released into the atmosphere. (EDF) • Methane is responsible for around half of the growth in tropospheric ozone formation, which is a potent local air. (UNEP) • Limiting climate warming below 1.5 -degrees will require “rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes”, including “deep reductions” in non-CO2 emissions like methane. (IPCC) • The Paris Agreement cannot be achieved without reducing methane emissions by 40-45 per cent by 2030. Reduction of this magnitude would avoid nearly 0.3° C of warming by 2045 and complement long-term climate change mitigation efforts. (CCAC) • Methane is increasingly a global climate priority, with ambition for addressing emissions building among both governments and companies. (UNEP) • Agriculture is estimated to be the largest single source of global methane emissions, responsible for roughly 40 per cent of anthropogenic emissions; Fossil fuels are the second largest source, responsible for approximately 36 per cent of emissions, with waste and others making up the rest. (CCAC) • Fossil fuels have by very far the greatest short-term reduction potential and therefore are prioritised. The International Methane Emissions Observatory (I...