Geneva, Switzerland:
The world’s glaciers melted at a dramatic rate last year and saving them is effectively a lost cause, the United Nations reported Friday, as climate change indicators hit record highs again.
The past eight years have been the warmest on record as concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide hit new peaks, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.
“Sea ice in Antarctica fell to the lowest level ever recorded and the melting of some European glaciers was literally off the charts,” the WMO said at the launch of its annual climate review.
Sea levels are also at an all-time high, with an average rise of 4.62 millimeters per year between 2013 and 2022 – double the annual rate between 1993 and 2002.
Record high temperatures were also recorded in the oceans – where about 90 percent of the heat trapped by global greenhouse gases ends up.
In the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to limit global warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius above the average level measured between 1850 and 1900 – and 1.5°C if possible.
According to the WMO report, the global average temperature in 2022 was 1.15 degrees above the 1850-1900 average.
Record average global temperatures over the past eight years came despite the cooling impact of a long-lasting La Nina weather phenomenon that spanned nearly half of that period.
According to the report, greenhouse gas concentrations will hit new highs in 2021.
The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) worldwide reached 415.7 parts per million, or 149 percent of pre-industrial (1750) levels, while methane reached 262 percent and nitrous oxide reached 124 percent.
Data shows that they have continued to rise in 2022.
Glacier game lost
WMO chief Petteri Taalas told a news conference that extreme weather caused by greenhouse gas emissions “could persist into the 2060s, independent of our success in climate mitigation”.
“We’ve already released so much, especially CO2, into the atmosphere that this kind of phasing out of the negative trend takes decades.”
The world’s 40 or so reference glaciers – those for which long-term observations exist – saw an average thickness loss of more than 1.3 meters between October 2021 and October 2022 – a loss much greater than the average over the past decade.
The cumulative thickness loss since 1970 is nearly 30 meters.
In Europe, the Alps broke records for glacial melt due to a combination of scant winter snow, the intrusion of dust from the Sahara in March 2022 and heat waves between May and early September.
“We have already lost the melting of the glacier game, because we already have such a high concentration of CO2,” Taalas told AFP.
In the Swiss Alps, “we lost 6.2 percent of glacier mass last summer, the highest number since measurements began.”
“This is serious,” he said, explaining that the disappearance of the glaciers would limit fresh water supplies for humans and agriculture, as well as harm transport links as rivers become less navigable, calling it “a major risk for the future.” .
“Many of these mountain glaciers will disappear, and the shrinking of the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers will also continue in the long term — unless we create a means to remove CO2 from the atmosphere,” he said.
Glimmers of hope
Despite the bad news in the report, Taalas said there was reason for some optimism.
The means to combat climate change became increasingly affordable, he said, with green energy becoming cheaper than fossil fuels as the world developed better mitigation methods.
The planet is no longer on track for a 3-5°C warming as predicted in 2014, but was now on track for a 2.5-3°C warming, he said.
“At best, we could still achieve a warming of 1.5°C, which would be best for the good of humanity, the biosphere and the global economy,” the WMO secretary-general told AFP.
Taalas said 32 countries had reduced their emissions and their economies were still growing.
“There is no longer an automatic link between economic growth and emissions growth,” he said.
In stark contrast to world leaders 10 years ago, “almost all of them now talk about climate change as a serious problem and countries have started to act,” he said.
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