The WMO warns that the COVID-19 crisis will not stop global warming

The paralysis of transport and much of the industrial activity due to the COVID-19 crisis will mean an approximate decrease of 6% in CO2 emissions this year, something insufficient to curb climate change, predicted today the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which confirmed that the five years 2015-19 was the warmest on record.

The secretary general of the organization, Petteri Taalas, launched this warning when presenting the report with which the WMO celebrated Earth Day, in which it was confirmed that the five years 2015-19 was the warmest on record, with a global average temperature 1.1 degrees higher than that of the pre-industrial era.

“It is estimated that this year there could be a 6 percent drop in emissions of carbon dioxide (the main gas that causes global warming), but according to the Paris Agreement the decrease should be 7 percent, and last for decades,” explained the Finnish expert.

“The drop in emissions, unfortunately, will be short-term, and will probably return to previous figures next year, or there could even be an uptick in pollution,” he said.

The head of the WMO, an agency under the United Nations, said that in any case the current crisis could have some positive effect on the fight against climate change, by showing the international community that we can work together for a common interest and urgent resolution.

“COVID-19, I hope, will teach the world the importance of international efforts in the face of great challenges,” he stressed, clarifying that while the pandemic is a problem “in the short term and with economic effects that will last several years” climate change is a much more lasting emergency.

The report presented today by WMO, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the first celebration of Earth Day, highlights that the current global global temperature (15.5 degrees Celsius) is 1.1 degrees higher than the pre-industrial average and 0.86 degrees higher than that of 1970.

For its part, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (407.8 particles per million in 2019) is 26 percent higher than that recorded 50 years ago, and other indicators also corroborate an acceleration of global warming, such as the average rise of 112 millimeters in sea level in half a century.

“Failing to tackle climate change can jeopardize the well-being of people, ecosystems and economies for centuries,” Taalas said.

“Extreme weather events have increased, and will not disappear because of the coronavirus,” he said, after calling on the international community to show “the same determination and unity against climate change as against the COVID-19 epidemic.”

WMO analyses and predictions have been made with data collected from various observatories at the British Hadley Centre, and predict further increases in global temperature in the coming years, faster on the earth’s surface than in the navy, as well as in the northernmost latitudes.

The report adds that since the 80s each decade has been warmer than the previous one, and that the last five years had an average temperature 0.2 degrees higher than that of the previous five years (2010-14).

The concentration of CO2 was also 18% higher between 2015 and 2019 than in the previous five years, and the WMO warns that carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere and oceans for centuries, so “the world is doomed to climate change, regardless of any transient reduction in emissions.”

In fact, despite the current drop in pollution, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to increase even in these months of industrial paralysis and confinements, as measurements from designated observatories such as Mauna Loa (Hawaii, USA) or Izaña (Tenerife, Spain) have shown.

At a time of great global concern about health emergencies, WMO recalls that the greenhouse effect contributes to natural disasters such as torrential rains and floods, which pave the way for the emergence of epidemics of diseases such as cholera.

In those countries where this disease is endemic, it is estimated that 1.3 billion people are at risk of contracting it, underlines the report, which also warns of the effects that climate change causes in food shortages or heat waves, “the most lethal meteorological risk in the past five years.”

The agency emphasizes in this regard that 30% of the world’s population lives in areas whose climatic conditions generate life-threatening temperatures for at least 20 days a year.

Source: The Vanguard