Marked by heat waves and extreme flooding, 2021, would rank as the fifth, sixth or seventh year the hottest according to the World Meteorological Organization.
“The planet was thrust into unfamiliar territory, with significant implications for present and future generations.” This is how alarming terms as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) summarized its interim report on the state climate in 2021 – which is based on the first nine months of the year and the data will be confirmed in January. The UN body concluded that the last seven years are becoming the hottest on record.
The year 2021, it should “only” rank as the fifth, sixth or seventh year the hottest, due to a temporary cooling due to La Niña – a thermal anomaly of surface water equatorial Pacific which reduces the overall temperature of the planet. “But that does not invalidate or reverse the long-term trend of rising temperatures,” warned WMO.
“This report shows how our planet is changing before our eyes. Depths of the ocean to The tops of the mountains, the glaciers melting the incessant extreme weather events, ecosystems and communities around the world are devastated. The COP26 should be a turning point for people and the planet, “responded the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, in a video address
From “strong regional disparities”
The WMO report comes on the day of the opening of the 26 th UN Climate Conference (COP26) in Glasgow (Scotland). The summit, which must gather 30,000 people in 196 countries, turns out the largest since the Paris climate agreement, sealed in 2015. The COP26 will considerably accelerate the fight against climate change, while commitments countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions remain largely insufficient: according to the UN, they put the planet on a trajectory of warming of 2.7 ° C by the end of the century, very far from the goal of the Paris agreement to limit well below 2 ° C, and possibly to 1.5 ° C.
“The average temperature of the Earth hides strong regional disparities, warns climatologist Christophe Cassou, director of research at CNRS and an author of the first part of the sixth assessment report of the IPCC, published in August. A global warming of 2.7 ° C correspond to about 4.4 ° C in France at the end of the century according to the institute Berkeley Earth. “
records CO concentrations 2
The concentrations of the three main greenhouse gas – carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ) and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) – reached record last year. The concentration of CO 2 , mainly emitted by the combustion of fossil fuels, was $ 413 parts per million (ppm), highest level since more than three million years .
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