UN Report: Greenhouse gas emissions hit a new record in the year 2020

Despite a temporary dip during pandemic-induced lockdowns, greenhouse gas concentrations hit a new record high last year and is increasing at a quicker rate than the annual average for the prior decade, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

The United Nations weather agency reported a stark warning about worsening global warming in its annual report on 'Heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere'. The UN also pointed 'development' as the major reason for the rise of greenhouse gas emissions. According to the reports by UN, parts of the Amazon rainforest have shifted from being a carbon "sink" that absorbs CO2 into a source of CO2 due to deforestation and reduced humidity in the region. 

The report was released just days before the start of a U.N. climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland. Many environmental activists, lawmakers, and scientists believe the COP26 conference, which is supposed to run from October 31 to November 12, marks a crucial opportunity for concrete commitments to the targets set out in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

Emission of greenhouse gases

The report said concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide – the gases that are warming the planet and triggering extreme weather events like heatwaves and heavy rainfall – were all above levels in the pre-industrial era before 1750, when human activities “started disrupting Earth’s natural equilibrium”.

“The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin contains a stark, scientific message for climate change negotiators at COP26”, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said of his agency’s report. “At the current rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, we will see a temperature increase by the end of this century far in excess of the Paris agreement targets of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. We are way off track”, Taalas said.

The data for the report comes from a network that tracks and monitors the amount of greenhouse gases that exist in the environment after some have been absorbed by oceans and the biosphere.

“One of the striking messages from our report is that the Amazonian region, which used to be a sink of carbon, has become a source of carbon dioxide”, Taalas said. “And that’s because of deforestation. It’s because of changes of the global local climate, especially. We have less humidity and less rainfall", he added. 

Effect of greenhouse emissions on Amazon 

According to Oksana Tarasova, Chief of the World Meteorological Organization's atmospheric and environment research division, the results showing the Amazon going from sink to source, were a first, but he noted that they came from a specific southeastern section of the Amazon, not the entire rainforest.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), worldwide carbon dioxide concentrations reached a new high of 413.2 parts per million last year. Despite a 5.6% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels owing to COVID-19 limitations, the 2020 rise was larger than the yearly average over the previous decade, according to WMO.

Taalas said a level above 400 parts per million - which was breached in 2015 - “has major negative repercussions for our daily lives and well-being, for the state of our planet and for the future of our children and grandchildren.”

Human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, which mostly originate from the combustion of fossil fuels such as oil and gas or the manufacture of cement, account for around two-thirds of the warming effect on the climate. According to the World Meteorological Organization, last year's economic downturn caused by the pandemic "had no detectable influence on atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases and their growth rates, although there was a brief drop in new emissions."

Image: AP