Smoke billows from a coal-powered electric power plant in Datong, Shanxi Province, in Chinese coal country on December 12, 2018. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI |
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Nov. 25 (UPI) -- The levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere once again reached record levels in 2018, the World Meteorological Organization said in a new analysis Monday.
The U.N. agency said in its Greenhouse Gas Bulletin the combined concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide continued to surge last year, repeating a pattern that has seen a 43 percent increase in total radiative forcing -- the warming effect on the climate -- in long-lived greenhouse gases since 1990.
The WMO report examines concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere instead of solely focusing on carbon emissions.
"There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, in greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere despite all the commitments under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change," WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in releasing the report. "We need to translate the commitments into action and increase the level of ambition for the sake of the future welfare of the mankind."
The WMO found CO2 levels were the main culprit in last year's overall greenhouse gas increases.
In 2018, global averages of CO2 reached 407.8 parts per million, up from 405.5 parts per million in 2017. That increase was very similar to the one logged from 2016 to 2017 and registered just above the average for the last decade at 147 percent of the pre-industrial level of 1750.
Methane and nitrous oxide levels, meanwhile, also rose by more than the decade's average in 2018.
Methane reached a new high of about 1,869 parts per billion, or about 259 percent of pre-industrial levels, while nitrous oxide concentrations rose to 331.1 parts per billion, or 123 percent above the pre-industrial standard.
