Although the Covid-19 pandemic has slowed global economic growth and reduced global mobility, the epidemic did not bring any respite in the fight against climate change. According to this year’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere reached a new high of 413 ppm in 2020 (parts per million, Particles per million). In 2019 the value was 410.7 ppm, before industrialization it was 287 ppm.
As long as the global community does not operate in a climate-neutral way, this value will continue to rise. That is why the change from year to year says something about whether the global community is making progress in terms of climate protection: Although CO₂ emissions rose less strongly in 2020 compared to the previous year, they did so more than the average over the past ten years. And this even though the CO₂ emissions from the consumption of fossil fuels such as coal and oil fell by 5.6 percent as a result of the pandemic. “With the current increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a rise in temperature by the end of this century that is well above the goals of the Paris Agreement of 1.5 to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” warns WMO General Secretary Petteri Taalas. “We’re a long way off course.”
Methane emissions also rose worryingly – from 2019 to 2020 even more sharply than a year earlier
CO₂ values similar to those of today would have last been around three to five million years ago on earth. Back then it was two to three degrees warmer and the sea level was ten to 20 meters higher than it is today. “But back then there weren’t 7.8 billion people,” says Talaas.
The WMO coordinates a worldwide monitoring network for greenhouse gases: measuring devices on the ground, on ships and on airplanes. The WMO report results from the evaluation of the measurement data, which is a position definition for the negotiators who will meet for the world climate summit in Glasgow on Sunday. It is expected that other governments there will present new climate plans and commit to them by the middle of the century Causing no more CO₂ emissions net. The real yardstick Oksana Tarasova explains that it is not the governments’ plans for successful climate protection, but the measurement signal in the atmosphere. “We have to reduce our emissions as quickly as possible,” says the head of the department for atmospheric and environmental research at WMO. “Commitments should now be followed by action.”
According to the Geneva-based organization, methane emissions are also worrying, as they rose even more sharply from 2019 to 2020 than from 2018 to 2019. Methane is responsible for around 16 percent of global warming. Since it stays in the atmosphere for a shorter time than CO₂, but contributes more to warming, climate researchers say that faster successes in the fight against climate change can be achieved by the targeted removal of methane sources. However, it is still unclear what exactly is causing the rapidly increasing methane emissions. Climate scientists suspect that wetlands in the tropics and oil and gas production play an important role.
The main source of all greenhouse gas emissions is the burning of fossil fuels, according to the report. 14 percent can be traced back to deforestation. A new WMO evaluation of aircraft measurements from 2010 to 2018 shows that the Amazon rainforest is developing more and more from a CO₂ reservoir to a CO₂ source – especially in the southeast and northeast of the region.