Top Scientists Warn Key Climate Indicators Are in Uncharted Territory

More than 60 leading scientists have issued a stark warning: the pace and severity of climate change indicators ranging from carbon pollution to sea-level rise to global heating are now in uncharted territory.

In a peer-reviewed update, they reported that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and deforestation reached a new high in 2024, averaging a record 53.6 billion tons annually over the past decade. That equates to about 100,000 tons of CO2 or its equivalents entering the atmosphere every minute.

Earth’s surface temperature last year surpassed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time. The scientists warn that the remaining “carbon budget” the amount of CO2 humanity can emit while still having a two-thirds chance of staying below the 1.5C threshold will be exhausted within a few years.

Despite investment in clean energy surpassing that of oil, gas, and coal last year by a two-to-one ratio, fossil fuels still dominate global energy consumption at over 80 percent. Meanwhile, growth in renewable energy sources remains insufficient to meet rising demand. The 1.5C limit, established as an aspirational goal in the 2015 Paris Agreement and since validated by science as essential for avoiding catastrophic climate impacts, continues to be under threat. Nearly 200 nations agreed to keep global warming “well below” two degrees Celsius, often interpreted as around 1.7C to 1.8C.

“We are already in crunch time for these higher levels of warming,” said Joeri Rogelj, a climate science and policy professor at Imperial College London. “The next three or four decades is pretty much the timeline over which we expect a peak in warming to happen.”

The study, published in Earth System Science Data, highlights that the rate of human-induced warming over the past decade is “unprecedented in the instrumental record,” far exceeding the 2010-2019 average noted in the UN’s most recent IPCC report from 2021. The warning signals are clear: climate change is accelerating at a pace that threatens to push the planet into irreversible and potentially catastrophic states unless urgent action is taken.