Climate change is driving natural systems beyond their limits


Natural systems, drought
Mario A. Villeda, Pexels

This article is also available in Spanish.

Key points:

  • Emissions of greenhouse gases in the post-industrial era have significantly altered the planet’s climate, resulting in extreme weather anomalies across the globe.  
  • While extreme events such as droughts, storms, heat and unpredictable precipitation are natural phenomena, the increased severity and magnitude with which they are occurring under climate change exacerbates their impacts on humans and natural systems.
  • Changes in climate and land use are making animals’ and plants’ habitats unlivable, forcing them to migrate or adapt, or otherwise become extinct. This has knock-on effects for human livelihoods.
  • Natural systems face pressure from both climate effects, such as heat, and human effects, such as land-use change, with the combination of these stressors intensifying challenges.
  • Environmental changes in one system are triggering reactions in other systems, with cascading effects that threaten the stability of the planet’s climate systems. 
  • Scientists are increasingly worried that climate change is edging natural systems closer to dangerous positive feedback loops that fuel more extreme weather and environmental degradation, in turn accelerating the pace of global warming. 
  • Every increment of warming increases the chance of dangerous positive feedback loops, the effects of which – including the loss of crucial global carbon sinks and weather-modulating ecosystems – are often irreversible.
  • Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have reached unprecedented levels in recent years, and deforestation and land degradation continue to erode the capacity of the land to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 
  • To reduce detrimental warming to humans and nature and meet Paris Agreement targets of limiting warming to 2°C or 1.5°C with little or no ‘overshoot’ – where temperatures temporarily exceed the target before dropping back – “rapid and deep, and in most cases immediate” reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will be needed across all sectors.

Climate change is intensifying weather anomalies

Since the discovery that burning carbon-rich materials such as coal, oil and natural gas can generate heat to power industrial activities, humanity has released billions of tonnes of carbon that had been stored in the Earth for millions of years into the atmosphere. This massive and continuous release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, including methane, has significantly altered the planet’s climate. Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the Earth’s average temperature has risen by approximately 1.2-1.3°C – driven largely by the continuous and unchecked accumulation of these emissions.[1]The range of 1.2-1.3°C represents a five-year average.

The speed of global warming has ramped up considerably over the last three decades, and particularly since 2015, attributed to increased fossil fuel emissions, deforestation and changes in land use. Despite pledges made to curb emissions in the Paris Agreement, where most countries worldwide agreed to limit “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels” by the end of the century, the last 10 years have been the hottest on record. 2023 is officially the hottest year on record since record-taking began. 

This planetary warming is intensifying weather anomalies across the globe, resulting in more frequent and severe storms, heatwaves and droughts, and unpredictable precipitation patterns. While droughts, storms, heat and extreme precipitation are natural phenomena, the increased severity and magnitude with which they are occurring under climate change exacerbates their impacts on humans and ecosystems (Figure 1). 

Extreme heatwaves are now occurring at almost five times the frequency they were occurring during pre-industrial times and are anticipated to further increase in frequency by 8.6 times at 1.5°C of warming, 13.6 times at 2°C of warming, and 27.4 times at 3°C of warming. Every increment of warming amplifies the climate risks to ecosystems and humans

Paris Agreement targets 

The 1.5°C target, endorsed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), marks a crucial threshold beyond which the impacts of global warming become increasingly severe for both humans and the environment. This target was determined based on the risks posed by increasing temperatures on a range of factors, including food security, extreme weather events, health, biodiversity loss, water supply and economic growth

February 2023 to January 2024 marked the first 12-month period in human history where average global temperature rise exceeded 1.5°C. Although breaching the Paris Agreement target would require average annual temperatures to stay above 1.5°C for at least 20 consecutive years, the fact that we are already seeing consecutive months exceed this threshold suggests that we are approaching this critical point.[2]The point where 1.5°C of warming is breached is measured as the midpoint of the first 20-year period where global average temperatures are 1.5°C higher than the pre-industrial average.

Even though the 1.5°C target has not yet been breached, we are already experiencing the consequences of global warming. Though substantially less risky than higher global warming levels, the target of 1.5°C should not be viewed as a definitive ‘safe’ limit – there is no universally ‘safe’ level of global warming. What is considered an acceptable level of warming will be highly subjective. For example, extreme heat in 2024 alone has had tragic consequences for people and nature: in Saudi Arabia, during the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, 1,300 people collapsed and died as temperatures soared in June, while almost 40 monkeys drowned in a well in India in a desperate effort to reach water as lakes have dried up the same month. 

Current policies place us on a trajectory to reach 2.7°C of warming by 2100. The expected impacts would not increase linearly, with certain effects becoming disproportionately severe. For example, the chance of having a major heatwave increases to 30% under 1.5°C of warming, but more than doubles to 80% at 3°C. At local levels, the impacts of a warmer world are also non-linear: as the global temperature reflects an average from across the world, actual temperatures in specific locations vary significantly, from much lower to much higher than the global average. 

This variation means that the impacts of warming are unequally distributed – ​​actual temperatures in specific regions can vary greatly – some places may warm much faster or slower than the global mean. For example, average July temperatures in 2023 for parts of northern and eastern Canada – which experienced record-breaking forest fires that year – were up to 7°C higher than the 30-year average. 

Fig. 1: Risks to land and ocean systems with increasing levels of global warming
Source: Figure SPM.3, IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, 2022. Circles from least to most indicate increasing levels of confidence. Colours from palest to darkest indicate increasing risk. 

Climate and land-use changes are critically altering ecosystems and affecting species in a number of ways, resulting in biodiversity loss (Fig. 1). Estimates suggest that wildlife populations have declined by 69% over the past five decades due to human impacts. Future climate change could cause abrupt and irreversible species loss this century, affecting marine ecosystems as early as 2030 and land ecosystems around mid-century. 

Reduced biodiversity weakens ecosystem resilience to climate impacts and also reduces ecosystem services – i.e. the benefits that humans derive from natural ecosystems – such as food security, climate regulation and carbon sequestration. Though difficult to quantify because of the innate complexity of natural systems and their interactions, ecosystem services worldwide are estimated to be worth USD 150 trillion a year – or twice global GDP in 2021, and at least 1.5 times 2023 GDP.

The relationship between climate and biodiversity is deeply intertwined  

The impacts of climate change on natural systems are complex and interconnected, making them difficult to predict and manage. Ecosystems face pressure from both climate effects, such as heat, and human effects, such as land-use change, with the combination of these stressors intensifying challenges for natural systems. Climate change is driving species to shift their geographic ranges as they seek more suitable habitats in response to changing temperatures, altered precipitation patterns and disruptions to their ecosystems. 

As temperatures rise, marine and land species are moving poleward or to higher elevations to find the conditions they need to survive, or otherwise risk extinction. Shifts in species’ distributions can lead to new interactions between species and their environments, with potential knock-on effects for human livelihoods. 

Marine migrations and mortality: lobsters, sardines, cod and anchovies

For example, climate change-driven increases in ocean temperatures are pushing American lobsters northward along the US coast, disrupting local fishing industries. Warmer waters along the coast of Northwest Africa are driving sardines northwards, presenting a risk to millions of people in the region that rely on these fish for food security. On the west coast of South America, warmer ocean temperatures are shifting anchovy populations, thereby threatening a globally important commercial fish industry. In these situations, fishing pressure under climate change could exacerbate the stress on fish populations that are already struggling to adapt to new environments, potentially leading to overexploitation and further declines in fish stocks. 

For extreme events with a sudden onset, such as heatwaves, some species may not be able to migrate or adapt quickly enough as they are pushed beyond their thermal tolerance limits, i.e. the temperature range within which a species can survive and function. Marine heatwaves in 2014-16 and 2019 in Alaska drastically disrupted Pacific cod populations, resulting in the closing of the fishery – Alaska’s second-largest commercial groundfish fishery – in 2020. 

In the Mediterranean Sea, climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves, leading to widespread mass mortality events of marine organisms. From 2015 to 2019, the Mediterranean Sea experienced five consecutive years of mass mortality events, affecting a vast range of marine habitats and species, posing a severe threat to the functioning of its ecosystems. 

Coral bleaching: too hot to recover

One of the most striking examples of climate change-induced mass mortality is warm-water coral reefs, which are increasingly facing mass mortality from human-caused marine heatwaves (Figure 1). Between 2009 and 2018, around 14% of corals from the world’s reefs had been lost, an amount larger than Australia’s coral reefs, largely due to bleaching, where corals expel the symbiotic algae that they depend on for existence in response to high water temperature, ultimately resulting in death if the warm water conditions persist. 

Though corals can recover if water temperatures cool quickly enough, the increasing frequency of  heatwaves due to climate change means that the corals’ windows for recovery between heatwave events are getting smaller, potentially leading to extinction. At 1.5°C of warming, estimates suggest 99% of coral reefs could be lost, with no coral reefs existing at 2°C. 

For humans, this means the loss of critical ecosystem services, such as coastal protection, food resources and recreation. Coral reefs reduce wave energy by up to 97%, safeguarding 5.3 million people and USD 109 billion in GDP per decade. Reef tourism is valued at USD 35.8 billion a year,[3]In 2017. while reef-associated fisheries are valued at USD 6.8 billion.[4]In 2011.  

Heat on land: mass mortality of flying-foxes, birds and howler monkeys 

On land, mass mortality events from heatwaves have been recorded in flying-foxes – bats that eat fruits and nectar. Flying-foxes play a crucial role in ecosystems by pollinating plants and dispersing seeds over large distances in their native habitats across South and Southeast Asia, Australia and East Africa. This helps maintain plant biodiversity and regenerate forests. They are also critical pollinators for commercially valuable foods, such as durian fruit. Despite their mobility, flying-foxes  are extremely sensitive to heat stress: during the 2019-2020 summer in Australia – one of the hottest on record, made worse by climate change – at least 72,175 flying-foxes died from heat stress

Mass mortality events on land have also been recorded elsewhere: an extreme heat event in South Africa in 2021 killed more than 100 wild birds and bats. Heatwaves in Mexico in 2024 caused the death of over 200 howler monkeys in the wild. Howler monkeys are important seed dispersers, particularly in forests disturbed by humans where they help to restore degraded habitats

Drought: mass animal mortality induced by complex, additive effects

Prolonged dry spells are becoming more common in South America: over the 10 years between 2005 and 2015, three once-in-a-century droughts – or megadroughts – occurred in the region. Severe drought in Colombia in 2014 is reported to have caused the mortality of at least 20,000 animals, including wild pigs, deer, crocodiles and tortoises. The interplay of land-use change – particularly deforestation – and human-caused climate change is intensifying the impacts of the drought: deforestation in Brazil and Bolivia has aggravated drying in Colombia by changing the patterns of moisture cycling by forests across the region.  

Declining pollination: a threat to food security

Pollination is a critical ecosystem service for humans, with the annual contribution of pollinators to global agricultural production and food security estimated at more than USD 500 million. Changes in climate are also disrupting the finely tuned relationships between insect pollinators and the plants they pollinate by altering the timing of flowering and pollinator activity. This creates a mismatch that can reduce pollination efficiency, with impacts on food security and prices. 

Bumblebees in Europe and North America are declining due to climate change, among other factors. This decline is threatening essential pollination services and could lead to an ‘extinction vortex’, where the loss of bumblebees negatively impacts the plants they pollinate, further endangering both species. Further studies indicate that bumblebees will continue to face declines with climate change. More widely, a study on 38 globally distributed insects projects that up to two-thirds could become extinct this century. According to the IPCC, three times the number of insects will lose more than half of their climatically suitable ranges at 2°C of warming compared to at 1.5°C. 

Dangerous feedback loops that perpetuate warming 

Environmental changes in one system may trigger reactions in other systems. For example, climate change is increasing the likelihood of wildfires by creating hotter, drier conditions and extending the fire season, all of which make ecosystems more vulnerable to burning (Fig. 2). Forests, which are estimated to cool the earth by 1°C, play a crucial role in global carbon storage and are increasingly threatened by wildfires

Climate-induced drying is transforming forests into highly flammable tinderboxes, increasing their vulnerability to wildfires. As prolonged droughts and elevated temperatures reduce soil moisture and dry out vegetation, forests are becoming less efficient at sequestering carbon and more prone to fires. These fires not only devastate vast areas of forest, thereby reducing their ability to absorb carbon, but also release stored carbon back into the atmosphere, further amplifying global warming. This creates a dangerous positive feedback loop, where rising temperatures fuel more extreme weather and environmental degradation, which in turn accelerates the pace of climate change.

Fig. 2: Illustration of a forest fire feedback loop
Source: World Resources Institute, 2020.

If the feedback loop is not stopped, the system could reach a critical threshold where a small change can trigger a significant and potentially irreversible shift in the system’s behavior or state, called a ‘tipping point’. Once a tipping point is reached, the system may undergo rapid changes that are difficult or impossible to reverse, even if the original trigger is reduced or removed (see fig. 3).  

Fig. 3. Visualisation of a tipping point
Source: Rate-induced tipping in natural and human systems, 2023. 

Figure 3 represents a landscape where the trough shows the stable ‘base state’ or natural condition of the system, the ball shows the system’s current state and the vertical red line shows the threshold. If the  ball, which represents the system, is to the left of this threshold, it rolls into the trough and returns to its stable natural state. If the ball rolls over the hill to the right and crosses the threshold, it rolls away towards a new state.

Tipping points can occur either quickly or slowly depending on the system. Fast-onset tipping points happen within years or decades after crossing a critical threshold. For example, the transformation of forest into savanna due to wildfires and drought. Slow-onset tipping points develop over much longer timescales, such as centuries. Here, a system might exceed a critical threshold without immediately transitioning into an alternative stable state, but the change eventually becomes unavoidable over time. An example of a slow-onset tipping point is the thawing of permafrost or ice sheets.

Runaway wildfires in Canada

Though wildfires are natural phenomena, they are becoming larger and more frequent – fires are burning almost double the amount of forest that were burning two decades ago. Canada experienced devastating forest wildfires in both 2023 and 2024, with 2023’s extreme wildfires found to have been made more than twice as likely due to climate change. The 2023 forest fires are believed to have released around 640 million tonnes of carbon, or about the same annual emissions from fossil fuels in a large industrialised nation.

Drought, fire and beetles in the US

A warming climate is causing more tree mortality in the western US from increased fire, drought and insect outbreaks. Warm conditions during the 2012-14 drought in California – aggravated by human-caused warming – not only reduced tree resilience but also increased populations of bark beetles, which infested ponderosa pine trees and increased their mortality by almost 30%. This highlights the intricate interplay between climate and ecosystems and how climate-induced changes can disrupt ecosystem balance and have cascading effects. It is estimated that every 1°C increase in local average temperature increases ponderosa pine mortality by 35-40% due to the additive effects of climate and beetles.   

Fire in the Brazilian Pantanal

Wildfires in 2024 in South America’s Pantanal Wetland – the world’s largest tropical wetland and one of the most biodiverse regions on earth – have burnt more than 13% of the biome. The fires were fuelled by climate change, estimated to have made these fires 40% more intense and 4-5 times more likely. If global warming reaches 2°C, fire conditions like these in the region will become twice as likely. In addition to threatening species survival and human livelihoods, the cascading effects of disruptions such as these threaten the stability of the planet’s climate systems.

Deforestation, fire and drought in the Amazon

Scientists are increasingly worried that the effects of drought, wildfires and deforestation in the Amazon – the earth’s largest rainforest – may cause it to enter a dangerous positive feedback loop, potentially leading to a sudden tipping point, transforming into an alternative state such as a savanna. 

This change would result in the irreversible loss of a major carbon sink – as once a certain level of damage is done, the forest will not be able to regenerate and recover – potentially releasing up to 90 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, more than double annual emissions from fossil fuels. 

In some parts of the Amazon, particularly in the eastern region where deforestation rates are highest, the forest is already releasing more carbon than it can absorb. An Amazon tipping point would also mean the loss of a critical modulator of regional climate, with every country in South America, apart from Chile which is shielded by the Andes, benefitting from the moisture generated by the Amazon.  

Alarmingly, the Amazon has already lost up to 15% to 17% of its forest area. Scientists estimate that the Amazon could reach a tipping point once 20-25% of native forest is lost. Other estimates suggest that a tipping point could be reached by 2050, corroborated by another analysis that suggests that the region could experience severe ecological disruption by mid-century, compromising the capacity of the forest to store carbon.

Glacier melt in the Andes 

Glaciers gradually form as snow accumulates and compacts over centuries. They typically grow during winter and melt in warmer seasons, with the meltwater providing a water source that is replenished during glacier growth. However, rising global temperatures are causing glaciers to shrink faster than they can regenerate. As glaciers retreat, the meltwater volume increases until reaching a tipping point, beyond which it declines until it stops as the glacier eventually disappears. 

Tropical glaciers in the Peruvian Andes are highly sensitive to climate change. Between 2000 and 2016, the area covered by glaciers in Peruvian Andes shrank by almost a third, attributed to a combination of climate change and the intense El Niño of 2015/16.[5]El Niño events are becoming more intense as a result of climate change. Meltwater from glaciers is a critical resource for drinking, irrigation and hydroelectric power and therefore has wide-ranging consequences for both urban and rural populations in the region. 

Permafrost and ice sheet melt in the Arctic, Greenland and the Antarctic

The Arctic is warming almost four times faster than the global average. This is leading to the melting of permafrost – a layer of soil rich in organic materials that has been frozen for many years – potentially causing a dangerous positive feedback loop. As permafrost thaws, microbial activity causes the significant release of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, which have been trapped in the frozen ground for millennia. 

The release of these gases contributes to further warming of the atmosphere, which in turn accelerates the thawing of permafrost. This cycle can lead to increasingly rapid permafrost degradation, amplifying global warming and exacerbating climate impacts worldwide – it is estimated that Arctic permafrost holds up to 1,600 billion tonnes of carbon, about twice the amount of carbon present in the atmosphere today. 

Of particular concern is the release of methane from permafrost, which is a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming potential that is 28-36 times higher than carbon dioxide.[6]This refers to the amount of heat a greenhouse gas traps relative to carbon dioxide, evaluated over a 100-year period in this example. At just 1.5°C of warming, there is high confidence that the risk of permafrost degradation is ‘high’, increasing to ‘very high’ at just over 2.0°C of warming. Permafrost thaw also comes with an additional risk: it releases pathogens that may pose significant health risks to humans and animals, as was the case with an outbreak of anthrax disease studied in 2020. 

The Arctic is also experiencing a reduction in sea ice extent due to rising global temperatures. This loss of sea ice contributes to a dangerous feedback loop: ice reflects sunlight, but as it melts, the darker ocean absorbs more heat, thereby accelerating warming. Scientists estimate that an Arctic sea ice tipping point could be imminent – at between 1°C and 3°C of global warming. Similar estimates have been made for the Greenland ice sheet and West Antarctic ice sheet. 

The collapse of these ice sheets will increase sea levels globally, devastating coastal areas in the absence of concerted adaptation efforts. With anticipated warming this century, the ice sheets are expected to continue melting, but as these sheets grow much slower than they melt, this could result in a lag response – meaning they will continue to melt even once temperatures stabilise. Their melting may not be reversible this century and we are likely to still be locked into several meters of sea level rise.

The collapse of a critical Atlantic Ocean current 

Another example of a crucial tipping point is the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – a critical ocean current system that modulates global climate by transporting heat, freshwater and carbon. If the AMOC slows down and collapses, it would result in an irreversible change to global climate, including disrupting rainfall patterns in the Amazon, with catastrophic consequences for global carbon cycling as well as agricultural production and food security from decreased ocean productivity and changes in weather patterns. According to climate scientist Tim Lenton, a collapse would cause changes to the earth’s climate that would be “so abrupt and severe that they would be near impossible to adapt to in some locations”. 

The AMOC has weakened since industrial times – with a significant contribution from human-caused warming – and is likely to continue weakening this century. However, it is debated how soon a complete collapse could occur. One analysis estimates that it is concerningly close – by 2057 – with another analysis also suggesting that the AMOC is on course for reaching a tipping point in a century’s time or potentially even sooner.  

Overshooting Paris Agreement targets

The term ‘temperature overshoot’ is used by the IPCC to describe scenarios where global warming temporarily surpasses a target level, typically 1.5°C to 2°C, before eventually declining back to that level. Temperature overshoot scenarios are common in climate models: according to the IPCC’s “Global Warming of 1.5°C” report, 90% of the pathways that aim to limit warming to 1.5°C by 2100 involve a period of overshoot. 

Scientists warn that temperature overshoot poses a risk to species through prolonged exposure to temperatures beyond their historical tolerance limits – that is, the environmental limits within which they have adapted over many years. This extended exposure can lead to increased stress, reduced resilience, and, in some cases, irreversible damage to ecosystems and extinction of species – even once global temperatures begin to decline back to a target temperature following a peak in warming during an overshoot. The risks are especially high for tropical ecosystems, such as the Amazon and the Pantanal, and tropical coral reefs, where species are particularly sensitive to temperature changes. 

Achieving a 1.5°C limit with minimal or no overshoot requires rapid and significant reductions in emissions, with limited carbon dioxide removal (CDR), such as reforestation or bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). On the contrary, pathways that delay emissions reductions are more likely to overshoot the target, necessitating greater reliance on large-scale CDR to lower global temperatures by the century’s end – which comes with various risks and uncertainties.  

The IPCC warns that climate-related risks are higher if global warming overshoots 1.5°C compared to if warming gradually stabilises at 1.5°C. The longer emissions cuts are postponed, the more we risk exposing ecosystems and human populations to severe climate impacts over the coming decades, sometimes with irreversible consequences.

Solutions are available to limit catastrophic warming 

Limiting detrimental warming to humans and nature to meet Paris Agreement targets of keeping warming to 1.5°C with little or no overshoot, or to 2°C, requires “rapid and deep, and in most cases immediate” reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in all sectors. 

Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions reached unprecedented levels in 2023, and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in recent years were at their highest in 4.5 million years. Methane concentrations in the atmosphere have been rising “dangerously fast” since around 2007, and have reached record levels in recent years. As the earth continues to warm, the ocean and land will become less effective sinks for slowing the rate of increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, undermining the planet’s natural ability to mitigate climate impacts.

Deforestation from land-use change – primarily from agriculture – and rising temperatures means that forests are losing their capacity to sequester carbon – an ecosystem service valued at up to USD 135 trillion. If uncurtailed, deforestation and land degradation will continue to release carbon dioxide and erode the capacity of the land to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. At the same time, land-use change, including deforestation, accounts for around 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions,[7]In 2010. making it a significant contributor to climate change. 

The most efficient and affordable way to cut emissions is by reducing dependence on fossil fuels and transitioning to renewable electricity. To meet the 1.5°C target, the IPCC recommends that coal usage must be eliminated, and oil and gas consumption reduced by 60% and 70%, respectively, by 2050.[8]Compared to 2019 values. Increased electrification with nearly all power from zero or low-carbon sources is essential. 

Reducing emissions from methane, a short-lived gas with a high global warming potential, is one of the quickest and most effective ways to slow global warming. Addressing methane sources such as pipeline leaks and abandoned oil and gas wells, and introducing technologies for mitigating livestock methane, could cut human-caused methane emissions by up to 45% by 2030. This could prevent nearly 0.3°C of warming by the 2040s, leading to significant health benefits and savings. To keep warming below 1.5°C, the IPCC recommends a 34% reduction in methane by 2030. Existing technology can reduce methane emissions from fossil fuel operations – which contribute around 40% of human-caused methane – by 70%, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). 

If countries and companies do not reduce their fossil fuel production, they risk increasing the costs of achieving a just and equitable energy transition as well as diminishing returns on investments and USD 1.4 trillion in stranded assets

Renewable power is becoming more and more accessible: costs from wind and solar have been falling since 2010, reaching record-low levels in recent years and making them increasingly competitive with fossil fuels. In 2022, 85% of added global utility-scale wind and solar capacity was more affordable than fossil fuel alternatives. In 2023, additions of renewable energy – particularly solar photovoltaic – grew at the fastest rate in the past two decades, by almost 50% compared to 2022. To meet the 1.5°C target, rapid renewables deployment of around 1,000 GW per year until 2030 will be necessary. 

Restoring degraded lands, preventing further deforestation and planting forests can significantly enhance carbon sequestration, improve resilience to climate impacts and help stabilise the global climate​. For example, forests managed and protected by Indigenous People in the Amazon between 2001 and 2021 removed 340 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year – more than the fossil fuel emissions of the UK in 2022. Forest restoration and protection are recognised by the IPCC as key to limiting global warming to 1.5ºC or well below 2ºC and come with various co-benefits, including supporting biodiversity, improving air and water quality, flood control and reversal of land degradation, if managed properly.

References

References
1 The range of 1.2-1.3°C represents a five-year average.
2 The point where 1.5°C of warming is breached is measured as the midpoint of the first 20-year period where global average temperatures are 1.5°C higher than the pre-industrial average.
3 In 2017.
4 In 2011.
5 El Niño events are becoming more intense as a result of climate change.
6 This refers to the amount of heat a greenhouse gas traps relative to carbon dioxide, evaluated over a 100-year period in this example.
7 In 2010.
8 Compared to 2019 values.
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