It's been yet another decade of lost opportunity to act on climate change.

The planet's average temperature has warmed over 1 degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution, and is on pace to heat up by 1.5 degrees more within 20 years. The 2015 Paris Agreement to keep global temperature increases under 2 degree C during this century is now seen as unattainable. And the world has already experienced a slew of climate disasters in recent years, including: rapid ice melt and fires in the Arctic; wildfire destruction in places like Indonesia, Australia, California and Brazil; massive bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef; and deadly hurricanes, heatwaves and droughts.

At the close of this decade, global carbon dioxide emissions are now projected to hit 37 billion tons in 2019. That sets another record for a third consecutive year and veers countries further off course from combating global warming.

One piece of promising news is that the emissions growth rate this year is slower than the prior two years, due in part to a shift to solar and other forms of renewable energy as a cheaper alternative.

Despite that slower growth, natural gas use is surging across the world and fossil fuel emissions are still hitting records that are unsustainable for the planet.

"Any growth is more than we can afford right now," said Rob Jackson, an Earth systems scientist at Stanford University and director of the Global Carbon Project. "What we need is for emissions to stabilize and drop."

The last decade has also brought more attention to climate change from media outlets, politicians and consumers, as global deadly and disastrous events occur more frequently and higher temperatures hit historical records. More people realize the direct impact that global warming has on their lives and on the next generation. And ongoing advancements in computing power has led to more sophisticated models forecasting future warming.

Here's a look at just how much emissions have risen, which countries are polluting the most and the surge in natural gas emissions that could lock in years of new fossil fuel as we enter a new decade.