The planet is getting closer to a “climate catastrophe” in the wake of a “global energy system” that it is broken, warned the Secretary General of the United Nations, Anthony Guterresfollowing the publication of “State of the global climate in 2021”, the report of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) which revealed a process of accelerated change. In a press conference, the head of the WMO, Petteri Taalasstressed that climate change “remains humanity’s greatest challenge.
Greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat content, and ocean acidification “recorded unprecedented values” last year, the report noted.
The data provided by the research make up a “grim confirmation of humanity’s failure to cope with climate disruption”, defined Guterres, who demanded urgent measures for a transition towards renewable energies, which is “easy to achieve”. That might allow the planet to move away from the “dead end” that fossil fuels represent.
A somber portrait of change
Human activity caused changes on a planetary scale, says the WMO report, which indicated that the impact on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere has dire and lasting ramifications for ecosystems.
The seven years between 2015 and 2021 “have been the warmest on record”points out the report, which recalls that the meteorological phenomena linked to La Niña, at the beginning and end of 2021, had a cooling effect on global temperatures last year.
However, 2021 was one of the hottest years on record, with an average global temperature of around 1.11 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level, a number that the Paris Agreement tried limiting to +1.5°C. However, Taalas warned, “we are now headed for 2.5 to 3 degrees of warming instead of 1.5.”
“The heat trapped in the atmosphere from man-made greenhouse gases will warm the planet for many generations.. Sea level rise, ocean acidification and ocean heat content increase will continue for centuries unless mechanisms are invented to remove carbon from the atmosphere,” he added.
The report also indicates that the number of greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new global high in 2020, with 413.2 parts of carbon dioxide (CO2) per million (ppm) in the world, that is, 149 percent more than the pre-industrial level.
The data indicates that it continued to increase in 2021 and early 2022, with the average monthly concentration in CO2 in Mona Loa in Hawaii reaching 416.45 ppm in April 2020, 419.05 ppm in April 2021 and 420.23 ppm in April 2022.
Meanwhile, the average sea level reached a new maximum in 2021, following increasing an average of 4.5 millimeters per year between 2013 and 2021. “This figure, which is more than double that registered between 1993 and 2002, is mainly due to faster mass loss from ice sheets,” the report says.
The temperature of the oceans, on the rise
Ocean temperatures also set a record last year, and the heat “is penetrating deeper and deeper”.
“The upper layer of the oceans, up to 2,000 meters deep, continued to warm in 2021 and everything indicates that it will continue to do so in the future, an irreversible change on time scales of hundreds to thousands of years,” revealed the study.
The oceans absorb regarding 23 percent of the annual human-caused CO2 emissions that accumulate in the atmosphere. That slows down the rise in atmospheric concentrations of CO2, but the gas still reacts with seawater and results in ocean acidification.
During this time, the hole in the ozone layeror over Antarctica was “unusually large and deep”, reaching a maximum of 24.8 million km2, an area equivalent to the size of Africa.
Five actions to stop the catastrophe
Guterres proposed five actions to promote the transition to renewable energy. .“If we act together, the transformation of renewable energies can be the peace project of the 21st century,” the official assured.
Among the actions, he noted promoting greater access to renewable energy technologies and supplies, tripling private and public investments in renewable energy, and ending subsidies for fossil fuels.
