Climate change again broke records by land, sea and air in 2021

Faced with “the grim confirmation of humanity’s failure to stop climate change,” António Guterres proposes a five-step transition plan to renewable energy.

Four indicators of the state of our climate, greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level, ocean temperature and ocean acidification, broke records again in 2021, according to the State of the World’s Climate Report 2021*.

The document, being prepared by scientists** from the World Meteorological Organization, highlights that these new marks are “a clear sign that human activities are causing changes on a planetary scale in the land, oceans and atmosphere, and damaging ecosystems and sustainable development in the long term.”

In addition to the effects on the environment, extreme weather events, the everyday face of climate change, claimed the lives of many people and cost the economy hundreds of millions of dollars. They also put access to food and water at risk, leading to a displacement of people that has increased in 2022.

The UN agency’s report on the State of the World’s Climate in 2021 confirms that the past seven years have been the warmest on record.

While 2021 did not break the temperature record, due to a La Niña event at the beginning and end of the year that had a temporary cooling effect, it was among those seven warmest, thus maintaining the overall trend of increasing thermometers. The global average temperature*** in 2021 was about 1.11 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level.

For the UN Secretary-General, the report is “a grim confirmation of humanity’s failure to deal with climate disruptions.”

However, António Guterres also said in a video message released after the report was released, that its results are a call to action to collect the “ripe fruit” that is the transformation of energy systems and thus get them out of the impasse that is fossil fuels.

Five measures for the energy transition

In a video message, he proposed five critical measures to jump into the transition to renewable energy:

• Treat renewable energy technologies, including battery storage, as essential and freely accessible global public goods
• secure, expand and diversify the supply of components and raw materials critical to renewable energy technologies
• create legal frameworks and reform bureaucracy to level the playing field for renewables
• set aside fossil fuel subsidies to protect the poor and the most vulnerable people and communities
• triple private and public investments in renewable energy to at least four trillion dollars a year

“Renewables are the only way to true energy security, stable electricity prices and sustainable employment opportunities. If we act together, the transformation of renewable energies can be the peace project of the twenty-first century,” Guterres said.

The world must act in this decade to prevent climate impacts from worsening and to keep temperature rise below 1.5° above pre-industrial levels.

For his part, the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization said that “it is only a matter of time before we see another warmer year than those recorded.”

“The climate is changing before our eyes. Heat trapped by human-induced greenhouse gases will warm the planet for many generations. Sea level rise, ocean heat and acidification will continue for hundreds of years unless means are invented to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Some glaciers have reached the point of no return and this will have long-term repercussions in a world where more than 2 billion people already suffer from water stress,” explained Petteri Taalas.

Professor Taalas commented that extreme weather events have an immediate impact on our daily lives, citing as more current examples the drought we are seeing developing in the Horn of Africa, the recent floods in South Africa and the heat waves in India and Pakistan.

And while he noted that years spent in disaster preparedness have put us in a better position to save lives, he stressed that economic losses continue to mount.

He therefore called for investment in Early Warning Systems, which are critical to adapting to climate change, but are only present in half of WMO member countries.

Key indicators

Greenhouse gases

Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new global high in 2020, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 413.2 parts per million (ppm) globally, or 149% of the pre-industrial level. Site-specific data indicate that they continued to rise in 2021 and early 2022, with a monthly average of CO2 in Mona Loa, Hawaii, reaching 416.45 ppm in April 2020, 419.05 ppm in April 2021, and 420.23 ppm in April 2022.

Global temperature

The global average annual temperature in 2021 stood at around 1.11 (±0.13) degrees above the pre-industrial average of 1850-1900. This record is somewhat less warm than some recent years due to la Niña cooling conditions at the beginning and end of the year. Still, 2021 ranks among the seven warmest years on record, ranging from 2015 to 2021.

Heat waves

Several exceptional heat waves broke temperature records in western North America and the Mediterranean. In Death Valley (California) 54.4° was reached on July 9, matching the highest value recorded in the world in 2020 since at least the 1930s, and in Syracuse (Sicily) 48.8° were reached. The Canadian province of British Columbia reached 49.6° on June 29, contributing to more than 500 heat-related deaths and fueling devastating wildfires that, in turn, compounded the effects of the November floods.

Ocean temperature

The ocean temperature did set a record. The top 2000 meters deep ocean continued to warm in 2021 and is expected to continue to do so in the future, a change that is irreversible on centennial to millennial timescales.

All datasets agree that ocean warming rates show a particularly significant increase over the past two decades and are penetrating deeper and deeper levels. Much of the ocean experienced at least one “strong” marine heat wave sometime in 2021.

Ocean acidification

The ocean absorbs about 23% of annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. It reacts with seawater and causes ocean acidification, posing a threat to organisms and ecosystem services and thus to food security, tourism and coastal protection.

By decreasing the pH of the ocean, it also decreases its ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. The IPCC concluded that “there is a very high probability that the pH of the ocean surface is now the lowest it has been in at least 26,000 years and the current rates of pH change are unprecedented since at least that time.”

Sea level

The average sea level worldwide reached a record in 2021, after increasing an average of 4.5 mm per year during the period 2013 -2021. This is more than double the rate recorded between 1993 and 2002 and is mainly due to the accelerated loss of water bodies in the ice sheets. This has important implications for hundreds of millions of coastal people and increases vulnerability to tropical cyclones.

Cryosphere

Although the glaciological year 2020-2021 saw less thaw than in recent years, there is a clear trend towards accelerating mass loss on timescales of several decades.

On average, the world’s benchmark glaciers have shrunk by 33.5 metres (ice equivalent) since 1950, and 76% of this thinning has occurred since 1980. 2021 was an especially tough year for glaciers in Canada and the northwestern United States, with record ice mass losses in the wake of heat waves and fires in June and July. In Greenland there was an exceptional melt in mid-August and the first rainfall in history was recorded at the Summit Station, the highest point of the ice sheet, at 3216 meters of altitude.

Floods

In addition to a large number of fatalities, the floods caused economic losses worth 17.7 billion dollars in the Chinese province of Henan, and in Western Europe some of the most serious floods on record occurred in mid-July, with economic losses in Germany exceeding 20,000 million dollars.

Droughts

Droughts affected many parts of the world, including the Horn of Africa, Canada, the western United States, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. In subtropical South America, drought caused large agricultural losses and disrupted energy production and river transport.

The drought in the Horn of Africa has intensified so far in 2022. East Africa faces the very real possibility that the rains will fail for the fourth consecutive season, leading Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia into a drought of a duration not experienced in the last 40 years. Humanitarian agencies are warning of the devastating effects on the region’s population and livelihoods.

Hurricanes

Hurricane Ida was the most important of the North Atlantic season, making landfall in Louisiana on August 29, with economic losses in the United States estimated at $75 billion.

Ozone layer

The ozone hole over Antarctica was unusually large and deep, reaching its maximum surface area of 24.8 million km2 (the size of Africa) as a result of a strong and stable polar vortex and colder-than-average conditions in the lower stratosphere.

Feeding

The combined effects of conflict, extreme weather events and economic crises, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, undermined decades of progress towards improving food security around the world.

Worsening humanitarian crises in 2021 have also led to an increase in the number of countries at risk of famine. Of the total undernourished people in 2020, more than half live in Asia (418 million) and a third in Africa (282 million).

Migration

Hydrometeorological risks continued to contribute to internal displacement. The countries with the highest number of displacements recorded until October 2021 were China (more than 1.4 million), the Philippines (more than 386,000) and Vietnam (more than 664,000).

Ecosystems

Ecosystems – including terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems – and the services they provide, are being affected by climate change, albeit unevenly. Some are degrading at an unprecedented rate. For example, mountain ecosystems – the world’s water towers – are deeply affected.

Rising temperatures increase the risk of irreversible loss of marine and coastal ecosystems, such as seagrass meadows and kelp forests. Coral reefs are especially vulnerable to climate change. They are expected to lose between 70 and 90% of their former coverage area with a warming of 1.5 degrees and more than 99% if it reaches 2 degrees.

Between 20 and 90% of current coastal wetlands are at risk of disappearing by the end of this century, depending on how quickly sea levels rise. This will further compromise food supply, tourism and coastal protection, among other ecosystem services.

World Economic Forum

The report was released just before the 2022 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, which brings together more than 2,000 leaders and experts from around the world under the theme “History at a Tipping Point: Government Policies and Business Strategies.” Mobilizing public-private action to meet the critical global climate goals of 2030 and 2050 is a key issue on the agenda.

“The State of the World’s Climate report highlights the need for rapid, large-scale and systemic action to mitigate the environmental risks presented in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report,” said Gim Huay Neo, Member of the Board of Directors of the World Economic Forum.

“As the recent IPCC report shows, we already have the means and knowledge to reduce emissions and limit global warming. We need to focus our efforts on bold policies and solutions that can rapidly transform the way we produce and consume resources. People and associations need to be at the heart of our approach, whether it’s to create new jobs, provide more access and affordability for all, and build a cleaner, greener living environment.”

“The upcoming annual meeting in Davos is a key opportunity to reinforce our resolve on climate action, translate ambition into action and forge more partnerships to create a future we can be proud of,” he said.

*The State of the Climate Report complements the series of six assessment reports being conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and is accompanied by a map that provides information and practical examples for policymakers on how key indicators of climate change are affecting the world in recent years and the implications they had at the national and regional levels in 2021.

**Dozens of experts from Member States contribute to the report, including National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMS) and Global Data and Analysis Centres, as well as Regional Climate Centres, the World Climate Research Programme (WCP), Global Atmosphere Watch (GVA), Global Cryosphere Monitoring and EU Copernicus climate change services.

United Nations agencies also contributing to the report include the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

To establish the global average temperature, the line from 1850-1900 is used as a basis. This is the baseline used in the latest IPCC reports as a substitute for pre-industrial temperatures and is relevant to understanding progress in relation to the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Source: United Nations