Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement have rebounded by 4.9% this year, new estimates suggest, following a Covid-related dip of 5.4% in 2020. The Global Carbon Project (GCP) projects that fossil emissions in 2021 will reach 36.4bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), only 0.8% below their pre-pandemic high of 36.7GtCO2 in 2019. The researchers say they “were expecting some sort of rebound in 2021” as the global economy bounced back from Covid-19, but that it was “bigger than expected”. While fossil emissions are expected to return to near-record levels, the study also reassesses historical emissions from land-use change, revealing that global CO2 output overall may have been effectively flat over the past decade. The 2021 GCP almost halves the estimate of net emissions from land-use change over the past two years – and by an average of 25% over the past decade. These changes come from an update to underlying land-use datasets that lower estimates of cropland expansion, particularly in tropical regions. Emissions from land-use change in the new GCP dataset have been decreasing by around 4% per year over the past decade, compared to an increase of 1.8% per year in the prior version. However, the GCP authors caution that uncertainties in land-use change emissions remain large and “this trend remains to be confirmed”. The GCP study, which is not yet peer-reviewed, is the 16th annual “global carbon budget”. The budget also reveals......       https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-co2-emissions-have-been-flat-for-a-decade-new-data-reveals?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Weekly%20Briefing&utm_content=20211105&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20Weekly 

Global security and stability could break down, with migration crises and food shortages bringing conflict and chaos, if countries fail to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, the UN’s top climate official has warned ahead of the Cop26 climate summit. Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said: “We’re really talking about preserving the stability of countries, preserving the institutions that we have built over so many years, preserving the best goals that our countries have put together. The catastrophic scenario would indicate that we would have massive flows of displaced people.” The impact would cascade, she said, adding: “It would mean less food, so probably a crisis in food security. It would leave a lot more people vulnerable to terrible situations, terrorist groups and violent groups. It would mean a lot of sources of instability.” She told the Observer in an interview: “It doesn’t only speak to the environmental side. It is also about the whole system we have built. We know what migration crises have provoked in the past. If we were to see that in even higher numbers – not only international migration, but also internal migration – [it would] provoke very serious problems.” The unusually strong warnings from the normally reserved Espinosa comes as world leaders make their final preparations for the Cop26 talks in Glasgow. The leaders of the G20 nations of the world’s largest developed and developing economies will gather in Rome next weekend for two days of preliminary talks, then fly to Glasgow, to join about 100 other heads of government for the Cop26 climate talks on 1 November.From record-crushing heat waves to ruinous floods and fires, extreme weather has punished the planet in recent months. Human-caused climate change is intensifying these devastating extremes and will make them even worse in the coming decades, a panel from the United Nations concluded in its review of climate science.                                   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/24/world-conflict-and-chaos-could-be-the-result-of-a-summit-failure?utm_term=9fe9d86a0cc61aacb7b119aae67c9184&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email   

Carbon Brief also published another three guest posts on such a mix of topics that it provides quite a challenge to tie them together for this weekly newsletter. The first unpacks new research on what would happen if carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques do not become widely available as expected. The authors find that “emissions should be cut twice as fast during the 2020s to keep warming ‘well-below’ 2C while insuring against CDR failure, even if the chances of non-delivery are small”. The second focuses on emissions from the steel industry, based on a new database of the world’s steel plants that shows most use carbon-intensive processes. Continued reliance on high-carbon technology means that the “steel sector is poised to either lock in continued emissions or put an estimated $70bn of investment at risk of stranding”, the authors warn. And, finally, the third guest post deciphers the drivers behind the fluctuations in Antarctic sea ice extent, which has seen small increases over several decades followed by a “precipitous drop” in recent years. The authors conclude that “it is clear that, under certain conditions, Antarctic sea ice can be susceptible to rapid change”.  A new study tracking the planet’s vital signs has found that many of the key indicators of the global climate crisis are getting worse and either approaching, or exceeding, key tipping points as the earth heats up. Overall, the study found some 16 out of 31 tracked planetary vital signs, including greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean heat content and ice mass, set worrying new records. “There is growing evidence we are getting close to or have already gone beyond tipping points associated with important parts of the Earth system,” said William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University who co-authored the new research, in a statement. “The updated planetary vital signs we present largely reflect the consequences of unrelenting business as usual,” said Ripple, adding that “a major lesson from Covid-19 is that even colossally decreased transportation and consumption are not nearly enough and that, instead, transformational system changes are required.” While the pandemic shut down economies and shifted the way people think about work, school and travel, it did little to reduce the overall global carbon emissions. Fossil fuel use dipped slightly in 2020, but the authors of a report published in the journal BioScience say that carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide “have all set new year-to-date records for atmospheric concentrations in both 2020 and 2021”. In April 2021, carbon dioxide concentration reached 416 parts per million, the highest monthly global average concentration ever recorded. The five hottest years on record have all occurred since 2015, and 2020 was the second hottest year in history.The study also found that ruminant livestock, a significant source of planet-warming gases, now number more than 4 billion, and their total mass is more than that of all humans and wild animals combined. The rate of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon increased in both 2019 and 2020, reaching a 12-year high of 1.11 million hectares deforested in 2020.Ocean acidification is near an all-time record, and when combined with warmer ocean temperatures, it threatens the coral reefs that more than half a billion people depend on for food, tourism dollars and storm surge protection. However, there were a few bright spots in the study, including fossil fuel subsidies reaching a record low and fossil fuel divestment reaching a record high. In order to change the course of the climate emergency, the authors write that profound alterations need to happen.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/27/global-heating-critical-measures-tipping-point-study