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The amount of methane in the atmosphere is increasing at an accelerating rate, according to a study by the World Meteorological Organization, which threatens to undermine efforts to curb climate change.
The WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin said “global emissions have recovered from the COVID-related shutdowns” and that increases in methane levels in 2020 and 2021 were the largest since that systematic record keeping began in 1983.
“Methane concentrations are not only increasing, they are increasing faster than ever before,” said Rob Jackson, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford University.
The study comes on the same day as a new UN report that says the world’s governments have not committed to reducing enough carbon emissions, putting the world on track for a rise of 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) of global temperature by the end of the century.
The analysis said the level of emissions implied by the countries’ new commitments was slightly lower than a year ago, but would still lead to a total degree of temperature increase beyond the target level set at the most recent climate summits . To avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change, scientists say, humanity must limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
“Government decisions and actions must reflect the level of urgency, the severity of the threats we face and the short amount of time we have left to avoid the devastating consequences of runaway climate change,” said Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN. Secretary of Climate Change. “We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emissions reductions needed.”
Instead, the UN report found, the world is moving towards a future of unbearable heat, escalating weather disasters, ecosystem collapse and widespread hunger and disease.
“It’s a sad, horrible and incomprehensible picture,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, of the world’s current warming path. “This image is not an image we can accept.”
The fastest way to affect the pace of global warming would be to reduce emissions of methane, the second largest contributor to climate change. It has a warming impact 80 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. The WMO said the amount of methane in the atmosphere increased by 15 parts per billion in 2020 and 18 parts per billion in 2021.
Scientists are studying whether the unusually large increases in atmospheric methane levels in 2020 and 2021 are the result of a “climate feedback” from natural sources such as tropical wetlands and rice paddies, or whether they are the result of natural gas created by the man. and industrial leaks. Or both.
Methane emitted by fossil sources has more of the carbon-13 isotope than that produced by wetlands or livestock.
“The isotope data suggests it’s biological rather than fossil methane from gas leaks. It could be from agriculture,” Jackson said. He warned that it “could even be the start of a dangerous warming-induced acceleration in methane emissions from wetlands and other natural systems we’ve been concerned about for decades.”
The WMO said that as the planet warms, organic matter breaks down faster. If organic matter breaks down in water, without oxygen, this leads to methane emissions. This process could feed on itself; if tropical wetlands become wetter and warmer, more emissions will be possible.
“Will warming fuel warming in tropical wetlands?” Jackson asked. “We don’t know yet.”
Antoine Halff, chief analyst and co-founder of the company Kayrros, which does extensive analysis of satellite data, said “we are not seeing any increase” in methane generated by fossil sources. He said some countries, such as Australia, had reduced emissions while others, such as Algeria, had worsened.
Atmospheric levels of the other two main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, also reached record highs in 2021, the WMO study said: “Increasing levels of carbon dioxide carbon from 2020 to 2021 was greater than the average annual growth rate of the last decade.”
Carbon dioxide concentrations in 2021 were 415.7 parts per million (or ppm), methane 1908 parts per billion (ppb), and nitrous oxide 334.5 ppb. These values represented 149 percent, 262 percent, and 124 percent of pre-industrial levels, respectively.
The report “underscored, once again, the enormous challenge and the vital need for urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent global temperatures from rising further in the future,” he said the Secretary General of the WMO, Petteri Taalas.
Like others, Taalas has urged looking for inexpensive techniques to capture the short-lived methane, especially when it comes to natural gas. Because of its relatively short lifetime, “methane’s impact on climate is reversible,” he said.
“The necessary changes are economically affordable and technically possible. Time is running out,” he said.
The WMO also noted the warming of the oceans and land, as well as the atmosphere. “Of the total emissions from human activities during the period 2011-2020, about 48% accumulated in the atmosphere, 26% in the ocean and 29% on land,” the report said .
The WMO report comes shortly before the COP27 climate conference in Egypt next month. Last year, in the run-up to the climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the United States and the European Union took the lead in promoting the Global Methane Pledge, which set itself the goal of achieving a reduction in 30 percent of the atmosphere by 2030. it was estimated that it could reduce the rise in temperatures that would otherwise occur by 0.2 degrees Celsius. To date, 122 countries have signed up to the pledge.
White House climate negotiator John F. Kerry said that in the joint US-China statement released in Glasgow, China promised to release “an ambitious plan” for this year’s climate summit that would to reduce its methane pollution. So far, however, this has not happened and China has yet to issue an updated “nationally determined contribution,” or NDC in UN parlance.
“We look forward to an updated 2030 NDC from China that accelerates CO2 reduction and addresses all greenhouse gases,” Kerry said.
“To keep this goal alive, national governments must strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years,” he said.
However, the United States is also among the vast majority of nations that have not updated their NDCs this year, something all countries pledged to do when the Glasgow summit ended a year ago.
Only 24 countries have submitted new pledges in the past 12 months, and few of the updated pledges represent a significant improvement over their previous pledges, according to the UN report. Australia made the most significant changes to its national climate target, which had previously not been updated since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.
Postcards of our climate future
In total, the combined 193 climate pledges made since Paris would increase emissions by 10.6 percent by 2030, compared to 2010 levels. This reflects a slight improvement over last year’s assessment, which found that countries were on track to increase emissions by 13.7 percent by 2030, compared with 2010 levels, the United Nations said.
But nations must cut their carbon emissions to about 45 percent of their 2010 levels to avoid warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), a threshold at which scientists say humanity can avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
Just under half of the countries have also submitted long-term plans to reduce their emissions to zero. If these countries keep their pledges, the UN report found, global emissions by mid-century could be 64 percent lower than now. Scientists say these cuts could keep temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), bringing humanity a little closer to tolerable levels of warming.
“But it’s really not clear whether countries will actually get it,” warned Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London who specializes in global warming pathways.
There are large discrepancies between nations’ short-term climate pledges and their long-term plans, he noted. For most countries, the emissions trajectories implied by their NDCs would make it nearly impossible to achieve a net zero goal by mid-century.
The UN findings underscore a simple fact, Andersen said: By waiting so long to act on climate change, humanity has denied itself the opportunity to make a slow and orderly transition to a safer and more sustainable future. sustainable Countries must constantly strengthen their ambitions, rather than making modest carbon reduction pledges that are updated every five years. No nation can rest easy until all countries have eliminated global warming emissions and restored the natural systems that can remove carbon from the atmosphere, he said.
“We need to see more and faster,” he said. “Today you lie and tomorrow you lie and the day after that you lie.”
Chris Mooney contributed to this report.
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