"Time Running Out", Says UN's WMO, As Four Key Climate Change Indicators Broke Records In 2021
Climate change is real and the weather patterns around the world are changing in front of our eyes, with increasingly disastrous consequences.
Despite the efforts by governments and scientists across the world, the possibility of reversing climate change is slowly slipping away, that is the indication in the latest State of Climate＊ report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) of the United Nations.
According to the report released on Wednesday in Geneva, the past seven years have been the warmest seven years on record. Four key climate change indicators 每 greenhouse gas concentrations, sea-level rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification 每 set new records in 2021.
※Time is running out§, UN Secretary-General Ant車nio Guterres warned in a video message. He used the publication of the WMO flagship report to call for urgent action to grab the ※low-hanging fruit§ of transforming energy systems away from the ※dead-end§ of fossil fuels.
Back-to-back La Nina events at the start and end of 2021 had a cooling effect on global temperatures last year.
Even so, it was still one of the warmest years ever recorded, with the average global temperature in 2021 about 1.11 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level.
Four key indicators of climate change "build a consistent picture of a warming world that touches all parts of the Earth system", the report said.
Greenhouse gases??
Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new global high in 2020, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 413.2 parts per million globally, or 149 percent of the pre-industrial level.
Data indicate they continued to increase in 2021 and early 2022, the report said.?
Sea level rise
Global mean sea level reached a new record high in 2021, rising an average of 4.5 millimetres per year throughout 2013 to 2021, the report said.
That is more than double the average annual rise of 2.1 mm per year between 1993 and 2002, with the increase between the two time periods "mostly due to the accelerated loss of ice mass from the ice sheets", it said.
Ocean heat
Ocean heat hit a record high last year, exceeding the 2020 value, the report said.
And it is expected the upper 2,000 metres of the ocean will continue to warm in the future -- "a change which is irreversible on centennial to millennial timescales", said the WMO.
Ocean acidification
The ocean absorbs around 23 percent of the annual emissions of human-caused CO2 into the atmosphere. While this slows the rise of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, CO2 reacts with seawater and leads to ocean acidification.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded with "very high confidence" that open ocean surface acidity is at the highest "for at least 26,000 years".
Climate changing before our eyes?
WMO chief Petteri Taalas said that climate was changing "before our eyes".
"The heat trapped by human-induced greenhouse gases will warm the planet for many generations to come. Sea level rise, ocean heat and acidification will continue for hundreds of years unless means to remove carbon from the atmosphere are invented," he said.
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