The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), in its report entitled « State of the global climate in 2021 » warns, Wednesday, May 18, that the global energy system is leading humanity to catastrophe. Four key markers of climate change broke new records in 2021, the document says: greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, temperature and ocean acidification. “Our climate is changing before our eyes”said WMO chief Petteri Taalas.
“The heat, trapped by human-made greenhouse gases, will warm the planet for many generations to come. Sea level rise, heat and ocean acidification will continue for hundreds of years unless ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere are invented. »
This report is « a lamentable litany of humanity’s failure to fight climate change »denounced the head of the UN, Antonio Guterres. “The global energy system is broken and bringing us closer and closer to climate catastrophe”warned Mr. Guterres, urging « End fossil fuel pollution and accelerate the transition to renewable energy before we burn our only home. »
The WMO said human activity is causing changes on a planetary scale: on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere, with harmful and long-lasting ramifications for ecosystems.
The report confirmed that the past seven years were the seven hottest years on record. La Niña-related weather events in early and late 2021 had a chilling effect on global temperatures last year. But 2021 remains one of the hottest years on record, with the average global temperature around 1.11°C above pre-industrial levels. The 2015 Paris climate agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times.
« A Warming World »
Four key indicators of climate change « construct a coherent picture of a warming world that affects all parts of the planet »says the report.
Greenhouse gas concentrations hit a new global high in 2020, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 413.2 parts per million (ppm) globally, or 149% of pre-industrial levels. The data indicate that they continued to increase in 2021 and early 2022, the average monthly concentration of CO2 at Mona Loa in Hawaii reaching 416.45 ppm in April 2020, 419.05 ppm in April 2021 and 420.23 ppm in April 2022, according to the report.
Global mean sea level hit a new record high in 2021, after rising an average of 4.5 millimeters per year from 2013 to 2021, the report said. It had shown an average increase of 2.1 millimeters per year between 1993 and 2002, the increase between the two periods being « mainly due to the accelerated loss of ice mass from the ice sheets »underlines the document.
Ocean temperature also hit a record high last year, surpassing the 2020 value, according to the report. The top two thousand meters of ocean depth are expected to continue to warm in the future – « an irreversible change on time scales of centuries to millennia »the WMO said, adding that the heat was always penetrating deeper.
The ocean absorbs about 23% of annual CO emissions2 of human origin in the atmosphere. Although this slows the increase in atmospheric concentrations of CO2the latter reacts with seawater and leads to ocean acidification.
Meanwhile, the report says the hole in Antarctica’s ozone layer is “exceptionally deep and extensive” of 24.8 million square kilometers in 2021, driven by a strong and stable polar vortex.
Antonio Guterres proposed five actions to relaunch the transition to renewable energy » before it’s too late « : ending fossil fuel subsidies, tripling investments in renewable energy, simplifying red tape, securing the supply of raw materials for renewable energy technologies and making these technologies – such as battery storage – freely available global public goods. “If we act together, the transformation of renewable energy can be the peace project of the 21stand century « Mr. Guterres said.
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