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Remaining carbon budget for 1.5 °C from the start of 2026 (Global Carbon Budget)

How much more carbon dioxide could be emitted from the beginning of 2026 for an even (50 percent) chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C, according to the Global Carbon Budget 2025: 170 billion tonnes, which the paper puts at around 4 years of emissions at the 2025 level.

Latest value

170Gt CO₂

World, 1 January 2026. Version Global Carbon Budget 2025 (ESSD 18, 3211–3288, 2026).

As published

“The remaining carbon budget from the beginning of 2026 for a 50 % likelihood to limit warming to 1.5 °C is nearly exhausted (50 GtC, 170 GtCO₂ left, equivalent to around 4 years at the 2025 emissions levels)”

Global Carbon Budget 2025 (Friedlingstein et al. 2026, Earth System Science Data), Executive summary, p. 3215. Checked word for word against the stored copy of the document every time the data is rebuilt.

Where it comes from

Producer
Global Carbon Project; published by Copernicus Publications in Earth System Science Data · Global Carbon Budget 2025 (Friedlingstein et al. 2026, Earth System Science Data)
Version
Global Carbon Budget 2025 (ESSD 18, 3211–3288, 2026)
File
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/18/3211/2026/essd-18-3211-2026.pdf
Fetched
2026-10-04 (automatically), 13,426,392 bytes
Fingerprint
sha256 166e10a66b4dfb1e3396be57dc0596a9e3de6c17a293a2f0b933d5f30572df12ETag "ccded8-65af2497bdb07" · Last-Modified Tue, 08 Sep 2026 05:48:41 GMT
Copies
No Wayback copy recorded yet.Our copy of the exact file
Cite the producer
Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Bakker, D. C. E., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Le Quéré, C., Li, H., Luijkx, I. T., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Schwingshackl, C., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Ciais, P., Aas, K., Alin, S. R., Anthoni, P., Barbero, L., Bates, N. R., Bellouin, N., Benoit-Cattin, A., Berghoff, C. F., Bernardello, R., Bopp, L., Brasika, I. B. M., Chamberlain, M. A., Chandra, N., Chevallier, F., Chini, L. P., Collier, N. O., Colligan, T. H., Cronin, M., Djeutchouang, L. M., Dou, X., Enright, M. P., Enyo, K., Erb, M., Evans, W., Feely, R. A., Feng, L., Ford, D. J., Foster, A., Fransner, F., Gasser, T., Gehlen, M., Gkritzalis, T., Goncalves De Souza, J., Grassi, G., Gregor, L., Gruber, N., Guenet, B., Gürses, Ö., Harrington, K., Harris, I., Heinke, J., Hurtt, G. C., Iida, Y., Ilyina, T., Ito, A., Jacobson, A. R., Jain, A. K., Jarníková, T., Jersild, A., Jiang, F., Jones, S. D., Kato, E., Keeling, R. F., Klein Goldewijk, K., Knauer, J., Kong, Y., Korsbakken, J. I., Koven, C., Kunimitsu, T., Lan, X., Liu, J., Liu, Z., Liu, Z., Lo Monaco, C., Ma, L., Marland, G., McGuire, P. C., McKinley, G. A., Melton, J. R., Monacci, N., Monier, E., Morgan, E. J., Munro, D. R., Müller, J. D., Nakaoka, S.-I., Nayagam, L. R., Niwa, Y., Nutzel, T., Olsen, A., Omar, A. M., Pan, N., Pandey, S., Pierrot, D., Qin, Z., Regnier, P., Rehder, G., Resplandy, L., Roobaert, A., Rosan, T. M., Rödenbeck, C., Schwinger, J., Skjelvan, I., Smallman, T. L., Spada, V., Sreeush, M. G., Sun, Q., Sutton, A. J., Sweeney, C., Swingedouw, D., Séférian, R., Takao, S., Tatebe, H., Tian, H., Tian, X., Tilbrook, B., Tsujino, H., Tubiello, F., van Ooijen, E., van der Werf, G. R., van de Velde, S. J., Walker, A. P., Wanninkhof, R., Yang, X., Yuan, W., Yue, X., and Zeng, J.: Global Carbon Budget 2025, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 18, 3211–3288, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-3211-2026, 2026.

What was done to it

  1. Quoted from Executive summary, p. 3215. The quote was found in the text of page 5 of the snapshot (sha256 166e10a66b4d…) before publishing.

    Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/literature.py · code sha256 a5b5e1344e63f00f… · inputs 166e10a66b4d…

  2. Value: "170 GtCO₂ left" is published as 170 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, dated 2026-01-01 because the paper counts the budget "from the beginning of 2026".

    Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/literature.py · code sha256 a5b5e1344e63f00f… · inputs 166e10a66b4d…

What it covers

Geography
World
Land use, land-use change and forestry
included
Basis
Cumulative carbon dioxide emissions from 1 January 2026 for a 50 percent likelihood of limiting warming to 1.5 °C above 1850–1900, as assessed in the Global Carbon Budget 2025. The budget is for total anthropogenic carbon dioxide, fossil and land-use change together (the paper updates the underlying IPCC AR6 estimate "accounting for the 2020 to 2025 GCB estimated anthropogenic emissions from fossil combustion (EFOS) and land use change (ELUC)" and states how long the budgets last "at the 2025 level of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions", p. 3259). Assessments made with other methods, such as Indicators of Global Climate Change 2025, give different values from the same date.
Unit
billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (Gt CO₂)