Infographic: The Global Carbon Budget

Learn more about the global carbon budget.

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Key points explain the global carbon budget, what impacts we can expect if we exceed it, and what actions the world can take to stay within it.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the world’s foremost collection of climate scientists. Throughout 2013/2014, the group will release its Fifth Assessment Report in four installments, highlighting the current state of the climate system and climate change, its environmental and socio-economic impacts, and mitigation strategies that can limit emissions. Here, WRI provides ongoing analysis of this groundbreaking climate change research—and its potential implications on communities, the economy, and the environment.

The first installment of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report confirms the overwhelming scientific consensus that the impacts of climate change are accelerating, and they’re largely driven by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. For the first time, the report also quantified the global “carbon budget,” the amount of carbon dioxide emissions we can emit while still having a likely chance of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. If emissions continue unabated, the world is on track to exceed this budget in only about 30 years—exposing communities to increasingly dangerous forest fires, extreme weather, drought, and other climate impacts.

Infographic Sources

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• ^{United Nations Framework on Climate Change, Report of the Conferences of the Parties on its seventeenth session, held in Durban from 28 November to 11 December 2011}

• ^{International Panel Convention on Climate Change, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis}

• ^{van Vuuren, D.P., B. Eickhout, P.L. Lucas, and M.G.J. den Elzen, 2006. Long-term multi-gas scenarios to stabilise radiative forcing - Exploring costs and benefits within an integrated assessment framework. Multigas Mitigation and Climate Policy. The Energy Journal Special Issue.}

• ^{van Vuuren, D., M. den Elzen, P. Lucas, B. Eickhout, B. Strengers, B. van Ruijven, S. Wonink, R. van Houdt, 2007. Stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations at low levels: an assessment of reduction strategies and costs. Climatic Change, doi:10.1007/s/10584-006-9172-9.}

• ^{Climate Central, The Age of Western Wildfires}

• ^{U.S. Global Change Research Program, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States}

• ^{Peterson, T.C., P.A. Stott, and S. Herring, Explaining Extreme Events of 2011 from a Climate Perspective}

• ^{World Bank, Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4oC Warmer World Must be Avoided}

• ^{Fung, F., A. Lopez, and M. New, 2010, [Water availability in +2°C and +4°C worlds ](https://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/RoySoc 4D Water.pdf)}

• ^{Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation}

• ^{United Nations Environment Programme, The Emissions Gap Report 2013}

• ^{European Climate Foundation, New unabated1 coal is not compatible with keeping global warming below 2°C}