Can the world still limit warming to 1.5°C?

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1. 1

   Emissions Gap Report 2024: No more hot air… please!

   UN Environment ProgrammePublished Oct 24, 2024Checked Sep 30, 2026

   “Current policies put the world on track for warming of up to 3.1°C this century. Keeping to 1.5°C requires global greenhouse gas emissions to fall 42% by 2030 and 57% by 2035 compared with 2019 levels.”

2. 2

   AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023

   Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ChangePublished Mar 20, 2023Checked Sep 30, 2026

   “Global surface temperature reached 1.1°C above 1850–1900 in 2011–2020. Pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot involve deep, rapid and sustained emissions reductions, with greenhouse gas emissions falling about 43% by 2030 relative to 2019.”

3. 3

   Indicators of Global Climate Change 2023: annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence

   Earth system science data (Forster et al.)Published Jun 4, 2024Checked Sep 30, 2026

   “The indicators show that, for the 2014–2023 decade average, observed warming was 1.19 [1.06 to 1.30] °C, of which 1.19 [1.0 to 1.4] °C was human-induced. For the single-year average, human-induced warming reached 1.31 [1.1 to 1.7] °C in 2023 relative to 1850–1900. The best estimate is below the 2023-observed warming record of 1.43 [1.32 to 1.53] °C, indicating a substantial contribution of internal variability in the 2023 record. Human-induced warming has been increasing at a rate that is unprecedented in the instrumental record, reaching 0.26 [0.2–0.4] °C per decade over 2014–2023. This high rate of warming is caused by a combination of net greenhouse gas emissions being at a persistent high of 53±5.4 Gt CO 2 e yr −1 over the last decade, as well as reductions in the strength of aerosol cooling. Despite this, there is evidence that the rate of increase in CO 2 emissions over the last decade has slowed compared to the 2000s, and depending on societal choices, a continued series of these annual updates over the critical 2020s decade could track a change of direction for some of the indicators presented here.”

4. 4

   Global implications of uncertainty in China's climate policy delivery.

   Nature communications (Zhang et al.)Published Mar 6, 2026Checked Oct 4, 2026

   “The delivery of China's climate policy has substantial global implications, yet persistent gaps between policy targets and implementation raise concerns about policy credibility. This study presents a structured credibility assessment of 292 targets across 58 national climate and energy policies, including China's updated 2035 NDC. We apply a morphological scenario framework to examine interactions between policy uncertainty and socio-economic and technological drivers, embedding these scenarios in an integrated assessment model under two global contexts: one aligned with current NDCs and one consistent with global net-zero ambition. We find that timely or accelerated delivery of China's net-zero target could partially offset insufficient ambition elsewhere by mid-century. Full delivery by 2050 reduces global CO₂ emissions to 13 Gt, compared with 23 Gt without such policies. Policy delivery uncertainty alone could imply up to ~500 GtCO₂ difference in cumulative emissions by 2100 (~0.17 °C warming).”

5. 5

   Effect of discontinuous fair-share emissions allocations immediately based on equity.

   Nature communications (Robiou et al.)Published Sep 3, 2025Checked Oct 4, 2026

   “National emissions targets are collectively insufficient to align with the Paris Agreement. The fair-share literature assesses whether these targets are fair and ambitious in comparison to emissions trajectories based on equity principles. Such emissions trajectories commonly start at present-day emissions levels. Here we show that these continuous trajectories inherently reward past inaction and increasingly do so with their iterative updates. We provide an approach to allocating emissions trajectories based on equity principles applied with immediate effect. The resulting discontinuous national trajectories not starting at current emissions levels imply significant immediate international support to fund rapid mitigation globally. Modelling allocations with or without continuity has remarkable consequences for the relative implied contributions to international support among high-income countries. We find that emissions targets of G7 countries, Russia and China are responsible for most of the global 2030 ambition gap, while only some countries align with their 1.5 °C allocation.”

6. 6

   Global trade-offs between consumption, carbon prices and equity.

   Nature communications (Li et al.)Published Aug 5, 2026Checked Oct 4, 2026

   “Reducing unnecessary production and consumption in high-income regions and among the wealthy, and organising production more around human needs and human well-being, may alleviate pressures on technology-driven decarbonisation strategies. We employ a modified integrated assessment model to explore the interaction between converging per-capita consumption, climate policy stringency and equity. Our pathways demonstrate that lower-consumption futures are associated with substantially lower warming, 0.3-1.1 °C across different carbon price trajectories, relative to high-consumption futures. Comparatively, global convergence of incomes between regions has a small influence on global temperature outcomes (<±0.1 °C). These findings indicate that reducing high per-capita consumption in high-income regions is a primary lever for achieving futures with equitable and decent living standards while meeting global climate targets. While such transformations may face political challenges, our scenarios suggest that unconstrained growth futures make it considerably harder to remain within safe climate limits.”

7. 7

   Tracking country-level mitigation progress using NGHGI-consistent carbon budgets.

   Nature communications (Weber et al.)Published Feb 13, 2026Checked Oct 4, 2026

   “The remaining carbon budget (RCB) of countries provides a benchmark for evaluating national mitigation efforts and was central to a recent European Court of Human Rights' ruling. However, estimates of national RCBs are inconsistent with CO2 accounting in national greenhouse gas inventories (NGHGIs). Here, we align RCBs with NGHGI accounting standards. For 2024, NGHGI alignment reduces the 1.5 °C (50%) global RCB by ~100 GtCO2 ( ≈ 50%) and the 2 °C (66%) RCB by ~200 GtCO2 ( ≈ 20%). Thus, we estimate the 1.5 °C (50%) NGHGI-consistent global RCB to be depleted by 2027. We provide NGHGI-consistent national RCBs for common allocation methods and most countries. Following Paris Agreement equity principles, we find that by 2025, 64-85 countries could have exceeded their fair-share RCB for 1.5 °C (50%). While national RCBs depend on normative choices and are unlikely to directly drive negotiations, our framework enables more methodologically robust RCB calculations to track country-level mitigation progress.”