The past seven years have been the warmest on average globally, with record greenhouse gas concentrations seen last year, according to surveys from Copernicus, the EU’s European agency. climate monitoring.
And the year 2021 stands as the fifth hottest year in history. Moreover, the year suffered the devastating effects of climate change: exceptional and deadly heat waves in North America and Southern Europe, devastating fires in Canada or Siberia, spectacular cold snap in the center of the United States or extreme rainfall in China and Western Europe.
The last seven years were the warmest on record, with 2021 5th but with a small margin to 2015 and 2018. See in the video which regions had the largest geographical anomalies for the year. #CopernicusClimate # C3S pic.twitter.com/1sbG5cLdVg
– Copernicus ECMWF (@CopernicusECMWF) January 10, 2022
Despite a level pulled down by the weather phenomenon La Nina, 2021 still recorded according to Copernicus an average temperature higher by 1.1 ° C to 1.2 ° C compared to the pre-industrial era (1850- 1900), a benchmark comparison to measure the warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.
The objective of the 2015 Paris agreement, to contain warming “significantly” below + 2 ° C and if possible at + 1.5 ° C, is therefore still dangerously close. On an annual average, 2021 ranks slightly ahead of 2015 and 2018, with 2016 remaining the hottest.
2021, a record year for GHGs
For 2021, the agency measured new record concentrations in the atmosphere of greenhouse gases (GHGs) produced by human activity and responsible for global warming.
CO2, by far the main cause of warming and which comes mainly from the combustion of fossil fuels and the production of cement, reached a record level of 414.3 ppm (parts per million), according to “preliminary” data from Copernicus.
For 2020, despite the slowdown in activity due to the pandemic, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO, UN agency) had measured this concentration at 413.2 ppm, or 149% higher than the pre-industrial level.
Keeping the Goals
Copernicus also tracks the emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas even more powerful than CO2 but which does not persist for a long time in the atmosphere, of which about 60% are of human origin (ruminant breeding, rice cultivation, landfills, the rest coming from from natural sources such as peatlands).
During the COP26 climate conference in November, around 100 countries joined an “initiative” aimed at reducing methane emissions by 30%. Objective which could, if it were held, make more realistic the slogan hammered out at the Glasgow conference of “keeping alive (the objective of) 1.5 ° C”.
The emission reduction commitments made by the various countries, including those announced on the occasion of the COP26, in fact leave the world on a warming trajectory of 2.7 ° C, a level described as “catastrophic” by the world. ‘UN.