This article was written by the Global Carbon Project
The 2025 Global Carbon Budget projects 38.1 billion tonnes of fossil carbon dioxide (CO) emissions this year.
Decarbonisation of energy systems is progressing in many countries - but this is not enough to offset the growth in global energy demand.
With projected emissions from land-use change (such as deforestation) down to 4.1 billion tonnes in 2025, total COemissions are projected to be slightly lower than last year.
With the end of the 2023-24 El Niño weather pattern - which causes heat and drought in many regions - the land "sink" (absorption of CO by natural ecosystems) recovered this year to the pre-El Niño level.
This year's report - published alongside a new paper in the journal Nature - examines the impact of climate change on the land and ocean carbon sinks. It finds that 8% of the rise in atmospheric CO concentration since 1960 is due to climate change weakening the land and ocean sinks.
The report says the remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5°C is "virtually exhausted".
With no sign of the urgently needed decline of global emissions, the level of CO in the atmosphere - and the dangerous impacts of global warming - continue to increase.
The research team included the University of Exeter, the University of East Anglia (UEA), CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich (LMU), Alfred-Wegener-Institut and more than 90 other institutions around the world.
"With CO emissions still increasing, keeping global warming below 1.5°C is no longer plausible," said Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, of Exeter's Global Systems Institute, who led the study.
"The remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C, 170 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, will be gone before 2030 at current emission rate. We estimate that climate change is now reducing the combined land and ocean sinks - a clear signal from Planet Earth that we need to dramatically reduce emissions."
Professor Corinne Le Quéré, Royal Society Research Professor at UEA's School of Environmental Sciences, said: "Efforts to tackle climate change are visible, with 35 countries succeeding in reducing their emissions while growing their economies, twice as much as a decade ago, and important progress in reducing reliance on fossil fuels elsewhere. Progress is still much too fragile to translate into the sustained decreases in global emissions needed to tackle climate change. The emerging impacts of climate change on the carbon sinks is worrying and stresses further the need for urgent action."
Glen Peters, Senior Researcher at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research, said: "It is 10 years since the Paris Agreement was negotiated, and despite progress on many fronts, fossil CO emissions continue their relentless rise. Climate change and variability are also having a discernible effect on our natural climate sinks. It is clear countries need to lift their game. We now have strong evidence that clean technologies help reduce emissions while being cost effective compared to fossil alternatives."
Professor Julia Pongratz, at LMU's Department of Geography, said: "The reduction in land-use emissions demonstrates the success that environmental policies can achieve. Deforestation rates in the Amazon have declined and are at their lowest level this season since 2014. Yet the sweeping fires in 2024 revealed how sensitive the ecosystem remains if we don't also limit global warming."
Other key findings from the 2025 Global Carbon Budget include:
China's emissions in 2025 are projected to increase by 0.4% - growing more slowly than in recent years, due to a moderate growth in energy consumption combined with an extraordinary growth in renewable energy.