Climate change indicators hit record highs in 2021: UN

GENEVA: Four key climate change indicators all set new record highs in 2021, the United Nations said on Wednesday, warning that the global energy system was driving humanity towards catastrophe.

Greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification all set new records last year, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in its "State of the Global Climate in 2021" report.

The annual overview is "a dismal litany of humanity’s failure to tackle climate disruption", UN chief Antonio Guterres said. "The global energy system is broken and bringing us ever closer to climate catastrophe." The WMO said human activity was causing planetary-scale changes on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere, with harmful and long-lasting ramifications for ecosystems.

WMO chief Petteri Taalas said the war in Ukraine had been overshadowing climate change, which "is still the biggest challenge we are having as mankind". The report confirmed the past seven years were the top seven hottest years on record.

Back-to-back La Nina events at the start and end of 2021 had a cooling effect on global temperatures last year. Even so, it was still one of the warmest years ever recorded, with the average global temperature in 2021 about 1.11 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level.

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change saw countries agree to cap global warming at "well below" 2C above average levels measured between 1850 and 1900 -- and 1.5C if possible.

"All major climate indicators are quite frankly heading in the wrong direction and without much greater ambition and urgency, we are about to lose the narrow window of opportunity to keep the 1.5-degree goal alive," Guterres’ climate action advisor Selwin Hart told a press conference.