The last IPCC release covered conditions as of about 2019. There is an effort now to update estimates of key indicators annually in between IPCC reports, called the Indicators of Global Climate Change 2023: annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence. I could easily spend a whole day reading and trying to understand the details of this one paper. I’ll pull out just one indicator, which is the “remaining carbon budget”. This metric looks not at annual emissions but at the cumulative amount of carbon emitted since 1850 and how much can still be emitted to keep average global warming under 1.5 degrees C. The results are almost laughable. The IPCC put the remaining budget at 500 Gt (billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide from the start of 2020. This update puts the remaining budget as of the start of 2024 at 200 Gt. Annual emissions are in the 50-55 Gt range, so using very rough layman’s math we have 4 years remaining. There are many reasons this is complicated and uncertain, including periodic adjustment of the target itself, emissions of gases other than carbon dioxide, and aerosols to name a few. But nonetheless, we are a few years away and it is clear the world would be on track to miss this target even if it were making a coordinated effort to prevent this, which it is clearly not. This is not a reason to throw up our hands of course. Any effort to limit the damage, no matter how small or how late, may help lessen or delay the catastrophe we are currently headed for.