Greenhouse emissions grow despite lockdowns

The pandemic notwithstanding with lockdowns across the world, the greenhouse concentrations touched a record high last year and grew at a faster rate than the annual average for the last decade, reports the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

In its annual report on heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, the UN weather agency said concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide were all above levels in the pre-industrial era before 1750, when human activities “started disrupting Earth’s natural equilibrium.”

“The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin contains a stark, scientific message for climate change negotiators at COP26,” WMO’s Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said of the agency’s report. “At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. We are way off track,” Taalas said.

The report draws on information collected by a network that monitors the amount of greenhouse gases that remain in the atmosphere after some quantities are absorbed by oceans and the biosphere.

The global average of carbon dioxide concentrations hit a new high of 413.2 parts per million last year, according to the WMO report. The 2020 increase was higher than the annual average over the last decade despite a 5.6 per cent drop in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels due to Covid-19 restrictions, WMO said.

Taalas said a level above 400 parts per million – which was breached in 2015 – “has major negative repercussions for our daily lives and well-being, for the state of our planet and for the future of our children and grandchildren.”

Human-incurred carbon dioxide emissions, which result mostly from burning fossil fuels like oil and gas or from cement production, amount to about two-thirds of the warming effect on the climate. WMO said overall, an economic retreat last year because of the pandemic “did not have any discernible impact on the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases and their growth rates, although there was a temporary decline in new emissions.”

However, in its annual emissions gap report, United National Environment Programme (UNEP) said that the world’s greenhouse gas emissions will fall by only 7.5 per cent by 2030 under current pledges from countries. The required rate is 30 per cent to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

The report also said India is among the several other group of 20 (G20) countries – Argentina, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia and Saudi Arabia – which are expected to release more earth-warming emissions during 2030 than they did in 2010.

Scientists have warned for years that the Earth is already experiencing the impacts of global warming such as unprecedented heat waves, extreme weather events, fiercer storms. But the global temperature rise would need to be capped below 2°C to avert even more devastating impacts resulting from large sea level rises and mass melting of glacial ice.

“We have eight years to almost halve greenhouse gas emissions to stand a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C,” Inger Anderson, executive director of the UNEP, said in a media release. “Eight years to make plans, put in place policies, implement them and deliver the cuts.”

The UNEP said G20 members as a group are not on track to achieve their original or new 2030 pledges. But India is among 10 G20 members (Argentina, China, EU, India, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey and the UK) likely to achieve their original NDC targets under current policies.