Last year’s lockdown due to CORONAVIRUS caused an unprecedented phenomenon: Scientists are sounding the alarm, a scary scenario threatens – Topky.sk

“Despite a temporary drop in emissions, the economic slowdown caused by the covid pandemic has not had a visible effect on the level of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and on the growth rate,” it is written in the WMO report. For example, carbon dioxide levels have reached record levels, although emissions fell by 5.6 percent last year. Last year the concentration was 413.2 ppm (parts per million), in 2019 it was 410.7 ppm. Scientists consider 350 ppm to be a safe limit for the concentration of carbon dioxide, a limit already exceeded in 1988. Last year’s figure was 149 percent of the pre-industrial era. Compared to the pre-industrial era, other greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, also record significantly higher levels.

Menacing report from the World Meteorological Organization: They should disappear completely within 20 years …

Carbon dioxide has remained in the atmosphere for several decades. The effect of its emissions has such a great inertia. About half of the CO2 that results from human activity is absorbed by ecosystems as rainforests. Another half of the emissions remain in the atmosphere. In some cases, however, the ability to absorb CO2 decreases. This is, for example, the Amazon rainforest, which is gradually becoming a net source of emissions.

Scientists see excessive greenhouse gas emissions as one of the reasons for rising global temperatures and global climate change. According to WMO chief Petteri Taalas, the countries of the world must introduce stricter measures to achieve the goal of limiting the rise in global temperature by two degrees compared to the pre-industrial era. If the concentration of greenhouse gases increased at the current rate, the rise in temperature at the end of the century would be far higher than two degrees. “The Earth recorded a similar concentration of CO2 as it is today three to five million years ago. At that time, temperatures were two to three degrees Celsius higher and ocean levels ten to twenty meters higher. But there were 7.8 billion people on Earth.” said Taalas.

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Environmental measures will be discussed by representatives of world governments at the UN climate conference, which will begin on Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland. Some countries are likely to push for a tightening target to limit temperature rises by 1.5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era. In August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that 1.5 degrees of warming was no longer inevitable.