From the United States to Russia, countries around the world have contributed to emissions in varying degrees climate-changing gases that have led to increases in average global temperatures and the well-known consequences of climate change. To examine the responsibilities of each nation, the magazine reports a study scientific data, led by scientists from the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The researchers, led by Matthew Jones, have developed a special tool to assess how much world conditions have actually affected Earth’s temperatures. The team, which also helped produce the Global Carbon Budget annual reports, used data collected from 1850 to 2021 on emissions of the three main greenhouse gases produced by human activities: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrogen (N2O). Experts then estimated how much and how each substance affected global warming.
According to the poll, USA, China and Russia are on the podium as the main contributors to climate change, having caused 17.3, 12.3 and 6.1 percent of global warming, respectively, through emissions from all compounds considered. Brazil and India would instead account for 4.9 and 4.8 percent of those shares, respectively. When it comes to climate-changing substances, experts estimate that carbon dioxide alone would have increased the global average temperature by up to 1.11 °C since 1850. Instead, 0.41 and 0.08 °C are due to methane and nitrogen, respectively.
“The countries of the world – says Jones – commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Our data set could be a very important tool to understand the impact of climate policies and countermeasures taken to combat the emergency.” “In the coming years – the researcher adds – we hope to see a significant reduction in emissions. Our work makes it clear that the contribution to climate change is not globally uniform, but varies greatly from country to country. In some countries around the world, land-use and forestry sectors can contribute significantly to warming, even when emissions from fossil fuels significantly outweigh the effects of deforestation. The resulting ranking gives important insights into the contribution greenhouse gas emissions of the different countries. Scholars report, for example, from 1850 to the present day USA, China and Russia appear to have caused average global temperatures to rise by 0.28, 0.20 and 0.10°C, respectively. The Brazil and theIndia instead they would have caused a similar rise of about 0.08°C. A more modest value is found in Indonesia, Germany, UK, Japan, Canada, which would have contributed about 0.03-0.05°C increase in average temperatures.
By 2021, 69.1 percent of all greenhouse gas warming could be attributed to carbon dioxide, even if this value seemed to vary greatly between the countries considered. In reality with agricultural sectors particularly developed, because the temperature rise caused by CO2 is lower than in economies based on other investments. In this sense, the United Kingdom holds the record with 87.6 percent of global warming attributed to carbon dioxide, followed by the United States (83.3 percent), Russia (76.1 percent), Indonesia (71.3 percent), Brazil (64.7 percent). percent) and China (64.3 percent). Evaluation of the gap in the climate responsibility Across countries, the experts showed that the combined contributions of Brazil, South Africa, India and China increased significantly from 1992 to 2021, from 17 to 23 percent, while among developed countries participating in the Organization for Economic Development (OECD) in In the same reference period, a decrease from 47 to 40 percent was observed. Since 1992, the scientists report, global warming related to emissions from fossil fuels has been about four times higher than intemperature riseand due to land use changes. To achieve the goals Paris Agreement, according to the authors, the contributions of the individual countries and the emission of climate-damaging gases must be drastically reduced. “Thanks to an annual update of greenhouse gas emissions for all countries in the world – concludes Pierre Friedlingstein, another author of the article – this publication could become a valuable resource for monitoring each nation’s contribution to global warming. This information is essential to develop targeted and effective strategies Addressing the climate emergency“.
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Valentina Di Paola