Sentence examples for gigatonnes from inspiring English sources

Limiting global warming to the agreed global target of 2C means staying within a 'carbon budget' of 565 GT (gigatonnes or billion tonnes).

To give the world a 50 50 chance of staying below 2C, total human emissions of carbon dioxide would need to stay below 840 gigatonnes of carbon.

In terms of carbon dioxide, 319 GtC is 1,171 gigatonnes of CO2 – or 1,171,000 Mt of carbon dioxide left in the budget.

The Point of No Return study, by consultancy firm Ecofys for Greenpeace, calculated that the 14 giant fossil fuel projects would produce 6.3 gigatonnes of CO2 a year in 2020 – as much as the entire United States emits annually.

The top 200 publicly traded coal, oil and gas companies now hold 555 gigatonnes of CO2 in their fuel reserves, boosted by their continuing efforts to find and develop new reserves.

(Still they rose, stubbornly, reaching 31.6 gigatonnes worldwide).

By one estimate the Amazon rainforest is sequestering an additional 1.3 gigatonnes a year, roughly matching the recent annual emissions produced by clearing it.

Greenland's ice cap is losing an estimated 200 gigatonnes of ice a year, enough to supply a billion people with water.

Even if countries honour their promises, the UN reckons that by 2020 emissions will exceed the trajectory for keeping warming under 2°C by up to 11 gigatonnes.

Until about 2000 the ice sheets seemed to be more or less stable, with increased snowfall on their tops compensating for increased melting at the margins.The recent rate of loss of Greenland's ice sheet around 200 gigatonnes a year represents a fourfold increase on a decade agoBut in Greenland something has changed.

To keep the world below that threshold, Mr McKibben says, would require humanity to limit future emissions to an estimated 565 gigatonnes of CO2.