GENEVA — Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2013 as increasing levels of man-made pollution transform the planet, the U.N. weather agency said Tuesday.
As the heat-trapping gas blamed for the largest share of global warming, carbon dioxide rose to global concentrations of 396 parts per million last year, the biggest year-to-year change in three decades, the World Meteorological Organization said in an annual report. That’s an increase of 2.9 ppm from the previous year and is 42 percent higher than before the Industrial Age, when levels were about 280 parts per million.
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Between 1990 and 2013, carbon dioxide and other gas emissions caused a 34 percent increase in the warming effect on the climate, the report said. The warming effect, or “radiative forcing,” measures the net difference between the sunlight that the Earth absorbs and the energy it radiates back into space. More absorption leads to higher temperatures.
Based on the current rate, the world’s carbon dioxide pollution level is expected to cross the 400 ppm threshold by 2016, said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. That is way beyond the 350 ppm that some scientists and environmental groups promote as a safe level, and which was last seen in 1987.
“We know without any doubt that our climate is changing and our weather is becoming more extreme due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels,” Jarraud said. “Time is not on our side, for sure.”
The WMO report also said that ocean acidification, which comes from added carbon absorbed by oceans, “appears unprecedented at least over the last 300 million years.”
To address the challenge, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has invited heads of state and other leaders to a Sept. 23 climate change summit in New York on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly. President Obama has said he will attend to help spur new commitments from governments, industry and civil groups for reducing greenhouse gas emissions ahead of next year’s global climate talks in Paris.
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