The world’s oceans reached their warmest and most acidic levels last year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday, as United Nations (UN) officials warned that war in Ukraine threatens global climate commitments.
The oceans have registered marked extremes, points out the WMO, in its annual report “State of the Global Climate”. According to the document, melting ice sheets helped raise sea levels to new highs in 2021.
“Our climate is changing before our eyes. The heat trapped by human-induced greenhouse gases will warm the planet for many generations to come,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.
The report follows the latest UN climate assessment, which warned that humanity must drastically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions or face increasingly catastrophic changes in the world’s climate.
Taalas told reporters there was little repercussion for climate challenges as other crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine made headlines.
Selwin Hart, special adviser to UN Secretary-General António Guterres on climate action, criticized nations that have reneged on climate commitments due to the conflict, which has driven up energy prices and led European countries to seek to replace Russia as a supplier of energy. energy.
“We’re seeing a lot of choices being made by many of the major economies that, frankly, have the potential to secure a high-carbon, high-pollution future, and will put our climate goals at risk,” Hart told reporters.
On Tuesday, the MSCI global stock index warned that the world will face a dangerous rise in greenhouse gases if Russian gas is replaced by coal.
The WMO report said that the levels of climate-warming carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere in 2021 surpassed previous records.
Globally, the average temperature last year was 1.11°C above the pre-industrial average — the world is approaching the 1.5°C threshold, beyond which the effects of warming are expected to become drastic.
“It’s only a matter of time before we see another hottest year on record,” Taalas said.
The oceans bear much of the impact of warming and emissions. Water bodies absorb about 90% of the Earth’s accumulated heat and 23% of carbon dioxide emissions from human activity.
The ocean has warmed much faster over the past 20 years, hitting a new record in 2021, and is expected to get even warmer, according to the report. That change would likely take centuries or millennia to reverse, he noted.
The ocean is also now the most acidic in at least 26,000 years as it absorbs and reacts with more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Sea level has risen by 4.5 cm in the last decade, with the annual rise from 2013 to 2021 being more than double what it was from 1993 to 2002.
The WMO also listed extreme heat waves, wildfires, floods and other weather-related disasters around the world, highlighting reports of more than $100 billion in damage.
