According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO.) levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached another new record high.
This continuing long-term trend means that future generations will be confronted with increasingly severe impacts of climate change, including rising temperatures, more extreme weather, water stress, sea level rise and disruption to marine and land ecosystems.
The WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin showed that globally averaged concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 407.8 parts per million (ppm) in 2018, up from 405.5ppm in 2017.
The increase in CO2 from 2017 to 2018 was very close to that observed from 2016 to 2017 and just above the average over the last decade.
Global levels of CO2 crossed the symbolic and significant 400ppm benchmark in 2015.
CO2 remains in the atmosphere for centuries and in the oceans for even longer.
Concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide also surged by higher amounts than during the past decade, according to observations from the Global Atmosphere Watch network which includes stations in the remote Arctic, mountain areas and tropical islands.
Since 1990, there has been a 43 per cent increase in total radiative forcing, the warming effect on the climate, by long-lived greenhouse gases.
CO2 accounts for about 80 per cent of this, according to figures from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) quoted in the WMO Bulletin.
“There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, in greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere despite all the commitments under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change,” said WMO Secretary-General Professor Petteri Taalas.
“We need to translate the commitments into action and increase the level of ambition for the sake of the future welfare of the mankind,” he said.
“It is worth recalling that the last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was three to five million years ago.
“Back then, the temperature was 2-3°C warmer, sea level was 10-20 metres higher than now,” said Professor Taalas.
The WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin reports on atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.
Emissions represent what goes into the atmosphere.
Concentrations represent what remains in the atmosphere after the complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere and the oceans.
About a quarter of the total emissions is absorbed by the oceans and another quarter by the biosphere.
Global emissions are not estimated to peak by 2030, let alone by 2020, if current climate policies and ambition levels of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are maintained.
Preliminary findings from the Emissions Gap Report 2019 indicate that greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise in 2018, according to an advanced chapter of the Emissions Gap Report released as part of a United in Science synthesis for the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit in September.
The United in Science report, which brought together major partner organizations in the domain of global climate change research, underlined the glaring, and growing, gap between agreed targets to tackle global warming and the actual reality.
A separate and complementary Emissions Gap Report by UN Environment will be released on November 26.
Now in its tenth year, the Emissions Gap report assesses the latest scientific studies on current and estimated future greenhouse gas emissions; they compare these with the emission levels permissible for the world to progress on a least-cost pathway to achieve the goals of the UN sponsored Paris Agreement.
This difference between “where we are likely to be and where we need to be” is known as the emissions gap.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the Summit had delivered “a boost in momentum, cooperation and ambition, but we have a long way to go.”
This will now be taken forward by the UN Climate Change Conference, which will be held from December 2 to 15 in Madrid, Spain, under the presidency of Chile.
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