Climate Change: Greenhouse gas concentrations, sea-level rise, heat waves and ocean acidification all set new records last year.
Climate Change, The United Nations says four key indicators of climate change set new records in 2021, warns that the global energy system is leading humanity to disaster and calls for an urgent shift to renewable energy.
Greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, heat and ocean acidification set new records last year, according to the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) UN 2021 World Climate Report released on Wednesday.
“Our climate is changing right before our eyes,” said WMO Director Petteri Taalas.
“The heat captured by anthropogenic greenhouse gases will warm the planet for generations. “Unless means are invented to remove carbon from the atmosphere, sea-level rise, heat and ocean sea levelling will continue for hundreds of years.”
According to the WMO, global warming levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere in 2021 will exceed previous records.
The report also confirms that the past 7 years have been the hottest 7 years on record.
Globally, last year’s average temperature was 1.11 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average, as we expected the effects of warming to be sharper as the world nears 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Last year’s temperatures were slightly cooler than in 2020 due to the cooling La Nina effect in the Pacific.
“It’s only a matter of time before we see the warmest year on record again,” Taalas said.
According to the report, the oceans have warmed noticeably faster over the past two decades, reaching new highs in 2021. It will take centuries or even thousands of years for this change to reverse.
Oceans have the greatest impact on warming and emissions, absorbing about 90% of the Earth’s stored heat and about 23% of human carbon dioxide emissions.
Ocean acidity is now at its highest in at least 26,000 years as water absorbs and reacts more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Additionally, sea levels have risen by 4.5 cm (1.8 inches) over the past decade, and the annual rate of increase from 2013 to 2021 more than doubles from 1993 to 2002.
The WMO report says that rising global temperatures are responsible for many extreme weather events worldwide. “British Columbia’s Lytton reached 49.5 degrees Celsius, breaking the previous Canadian record of 4.6 degrees,” said Blair Trevin, one of the authors of the report.
“It wasn’t just the heat. The extreme cold struck Latin America in February with the most expensive winter storm on record,” he said, adding that Madrid, Spain recorded the highest snowfall since 1971.
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