How much can the climate be further saved? Carbon Budget way

The European Space Agency (ESA) said in an article in SciTechDaily that a target that was espoused in the Paris Agreement for global warming is not to surpass the global average yearly temperature by 1.5°C.

This fixes a limit on the extra carbon that can be added by us to the atmosphere—the carbon budget. The carbon budget left now is only about 17%, which is around 10 years at current rates of emission.

Each country reports its yearly greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) to the United Nations (UN). Based on it, scientists then fix these emissions against the approximate values of the carbon that the natural carbon sinks of Earth absorb. It is the bottom-up approach for the carbon budget to be calculated.

Another method of checking carbon sources and sinks is to gauge the quantities of GHGs in the atmosphere from space, which is the top-down approach. Besides measuring atmospheric carbon, the Climate Change Initiative of ESA uses satellite observations to monitor other carbon stocks in the sea and on land.

To determine the carbon fluxes at the surface, observations are combined with atmospheric and biophysical computer models. Such an approach will improve the accuracy of each GHG budget and help disconnect natural fluxes from agricultural and non-renewable energy source emissions. It will, in turn, help us measure whether we can limit ourselves within the 1.5°C carbon budget or whether we have to be prepared for more warming.

Source: scitechdaily.com