Earth keeps getting hotter
– Earth has undergone a series of dire records in 2016, including hottest year in modern times, highest sea level, and most heat-trapping gases yet emitted, a global climate report said this week.
A range of key climate and weather indicators show the planet is growing increasingly warm, a trend that shows no signs of slowing down, said the annual “State of the Climate Report”.
“Last year’s record heat resulted from the combined influence of long-term global warming and a strong El Nino early in the year,” said the report.
“The major indicators of climate change continued to reflect trends consistent with a warming planet,” it added, noting that several markers – such as land and ocean temperatures, sea level and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere – broke records set just one year earlier.
The ominous news comes two months after President Donald Trump announced the United States would withdraw from the 2015 Paris accord on global warming, a decision that has sparked widespread criticism.
In the past, billionaire Trump called climate change “a hoax” invented by the Chinese and dismissing scientific evidence of the human contribution.
But as humanity continues to rely on fossil fuels for energy, unprecedented levels of greenhouse gases are polluting the atmosphere, acting like a blanket to capture heat around the planet, the report emphasised.
The presence of all the major greenhouse gases that drive warming, including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide, have risen to new heights, the report said.
Atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 402.9 parts per million (ppm), surpassing 400ppm for the first time in the modern record and in ice core records dating back as far as 800 000 years.
“Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity and life on Earth” said the peer-reviewed publication, put together by nearly 500 scientists around the globe and released each year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the American Meteorological Society.
The entire 280-page report is available online.
The report confirmed prior announcements that 2016 was the hottest year since contemporary records began, marking the third year in a row that global records were broken across the planet. Both land and sea surface temperatures set new highs.
Melting glaciers and polar ice caps swelled the world’s oceans, and global average sea level rose to a new record high in 2016 – about 82mm higher than the 1993 average.
The global sea level has risen for six straight years, with the highest rates of increase seen in the western Pacific and Indian Oceans. – AFP