BackRecord rise in greenhouse gases in 2012: UN
In 2012, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose 2.2 parts per million from 2011 to 393.1 parts per million
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New Delhi: The amount of greenhouse gases in the world’s atmosphere reached a record high in 2012, according to the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Between 1990 and 2012, there was a 32% increase in warming effect on the earth’s climate, induced by carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, WMO’s annual greenhouse gases bulletin said on Wednesday.
Carbon dioxide, mainly from fossil fuel emissions, was responsible for 80% of this increase, the bulletin said. In 2012, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose 2.2 parts per million from 2011 to 393.1 parts per million, rising higher than the average annual increase of 2.02 parts per million in the previous 10 years.
This bulletin was released as the world gears up for the 19th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held on 11 November in Warsaw, Poland. Since the 20 years that the first climate change conference took place, the world’s greenhouse emissions have increased by at least 15%, according to Chandra Bhushan, deputy director general of New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.
“Despite knowing that the world is undergoing climate change, no country, developed or under developed, is moving towards a low carbon economy, which is why this unprecedented level of increase in greenhouse gas concentration has taken place," said Chandra Bhushan.
Fifty countries contributed to data for the WMO bulletin that reports on atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, the ones that remain in the atmosphere due to the complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere and the oceans.
Carbon dioxide, a gas that remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, is emitted by human activities such as burning of fossil fuel and deforestation. The report said that most aspects of climate change will persist for centuries even if emissions of carbon dioxide are stopped immediately.
Regarding methane, the bulletin said there has not been a measurable increase in Arctic methane due to the melting of permafrost. Methane facilitates the destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer that protects humans from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun.
In July, researchers at the University of Cambridge and Erasmus University in the Netherlands had estimated that the release of methane in the Arctic could speed up the melting of sea ice and climate change with a cost to the global economy of up to $60 trillion in the coming decades, Reuters reported, citing a paper published in the journal Nature. That’s roughly the size of the global economy in 2012.
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