The temperature of seawater in the oceans reached a record level worldwide last year. This also applies to the acidification of seawater, while the continuing melting of the ice caps, combined with warming of the water, has pushed the sea level to unprecedented heights. This is the conclusion of the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in its annual report State of the Global Climate.
A fourth record from last year concerns global greenhouse gas emissions. These are again worrying conclusions about four key climate indicators. The WMO observes, not for the first time, that human actions lead to far-reaching changes and harmful and long-lasting consequences on land, in the seas and in the atmosphere.
Extreme weather (the everyday ‘face’ of climate change, according to the WMO) will have resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in damage by 2021. The effects of all the heat waves, forest fires, floods and other climate-related disasters have claimed many lives and have come at the expense of well-being, food and water security.
Global sea level has risen an average of 4.5 millimeters per year over the past ten years. Compared to the decade between 1993 and 2002, the increase between 2013 and 2021 was more than double.
Trend not reversed
The past seven years have been the warmest years since records began. In 2021, both at the beginning and at the end of the year, there was talk of La Niña, a weather phenomenon in which warm water is driven off the coast of Latin America, resulting in a temporary cold current.
As a result, temperatures were slightly lower than in 2020, but this did not reverse the trend of globally increasing average temperatures.
The average global temperature last year was 1.11 degrees above pre-industrial levels. In the Paris agreement of 2015, it was agreed to limit the global average increase to a maximum of 2 degrees and no less than 1.5 degrees.
Last week the WMO itself came up with a analyse which showed that the global average temperature may have increased by 1.5 degrees as early as 2026. The probability of that happening is almost 50 percent, the WMO estimates. The hottest year to date was 2016, when it was 1.2 degrees warmer than before the industrial revolution.
–
