Peña: 2021 State of the Global Climate

THE World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released last May 18, 2022, its State of the Global Climate report for 2021. The WMO is a specialized agency of the United Nations dedicated to international cooperation and coordination on the state and behavior of the Earth’s atmosphere, its interaction with the land and oceans, the weather and climate it produces, and the resulting distribution of water resources.

According to the report, four key climate change indicators – greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification – set new records in 2021. It confirmed that the past seven years have been the warmest seven years on record. The average global temperature in 2021 was about 1.11 (± 0.13) ° C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average. The most recent seven years, 2015 to 2021, are the seven warmest years on record.

Here are the other highlights of the WMO Report:

Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new global high in 2020, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 413.2 parts per million (ppm) globally, or 149 percent of the pre-industrial level

Ocean heat was record high. The upper 2000m depth of the ocean continued to warm in 2021 and it is expected that it will continue to warm in the future – a change, which is irreversible on centennial to millennial time scales.

Ocean acidification. The IPCC concluded that “there is very high confidence that open ocean surface pH is now the lowest it has been for at least 26,000 years and current rates of pH change are unprecedented since at least that time.”

Global mean sea level reached a new record high in 2021 after increasing at an average 4.5 mm per year over the period 2013 -2021. This is more than double the rate of between 1993 and 2002 and is mainly due to the accelerated loss of ice mass from the ice sheets.

Cryosphere: On average, the world’s reference glaciers have thinned by 33.5 meters (ice-equivalent) since 1950, with 76 percent of this thinning since 1980.

Exceptional heatwaves broke records across western North America and the Mediterranean. Death Valley, California reached 54.4 °C on 9 July, equalling a similar 2020 value as the highest recorded in the world since at least the 1930s, and Syracuse in Sicily reached 48.8 °C. The Canadian province of British Columbia, reached 49.6 °C on 29 June, contributing to more than 500 reported heat-related deaths and devastating wildfires.

Flooding induced economic losses of US$17.7 billion in Henan province of China, and Western Europe experienced some of its most severe flooding on record in mid-July associated with economic losses in Germany exceeding US$20 billion. There was heavy loss of life.

Drought affected many parts of the world, including the Horn of Africa, Canada, the western United States, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. In sub-tropical South America, drought caused big agricultural losses and disrupted energy production and river transport.

Hurricane Ida was the most significant of the North Atlantic season, making landfall in Louisiana on 29 August, with economic losses in the United States estimated at US$75 billion.

The ozone hole over the Antarctic was unusually large and deep, reaching its maximum area of 24.8 million km2 (the size of Africa) as a result of a strong and stable polar vortex and colder than average conditions in the lower stratosphere.

Food security: The compounded effects of conflict, extreme weather events and economic shocks, further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, undermined decades of progress towards improving food security globally.

Displacement: Hydrometeorological hazards continued to contribute to internal displacement. The countries with the highest numbers of displacements recorded as of October 2021 were China (more than 1.4 million), the Philippines (more than 386 000) and Viet Nam (more than 664 000).

Ecosystems: including terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems – and the services they provide, are affected by the changing climate and some are more vulnerable than others. Some ecosystems are degrading at an unprecedented rate.

With all these hard facts, I hope our world leaders would make true of their commitments to address climate change.

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