GHGs Show No Slowdown, No Decline: #GlobalHeating Shoots Up – Below 2C
In yet another signal to global governments that greater ambition is
needed to combat the climate crisis, an annual United Nations report
just released reveals that levels of long-lived greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere reached record highs last year.
No Decline, No Slowdown in GHGs
The latest World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Greenhouse Gas Bulletin (pdf) provided figures for globally averaged concentrations of three key climate-heating gases in 2018:
- Carbon dioxide (CO2), which reached 407.8 parts per million;
- Methane (CH4), which reached 1869 parts per billion; and
- Nitrous oxide (N2O), which reached 331.1 parts per billion.
“These
values represent, respectively, 147%, 259%, and 123% of pre-industrial
(before 1750) levels,” the bulletin noted. In terms of contributions to
warming the climate, “carbon dioxide is the single most important
anthropogenic GHG in the atmosphere” among all long-lived greenhouse
gases, the primary focus of the report.