Carbon dioxide levels hit record high in 2014 — United Nations agency

Many scientists contend that the carbon dioxide levels should remain well below 400 ppm to avoid long-term disruptions to the Earth’s climate.

“Every year we report a new record in greenhouse gas concentrations”, said WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud in a statement.

STOCKHOLM (AP) – Levels of carbon dioxide and methane, the two most important greenhouse gases, reached record highs past year, continuing the warming effect on the world’s climate, the United Nations weather agency said Monday.

The global average climbed to 397.7 ppm in 2014, the WMO report said, and then, in early 2015, it exceeded 400 ppm for the first time since record-keeping began, the organization’s data shows.

The 400ppm threshold has already been crossed in 2014 in the northern hempishere and is reached globally during spring – when concentrations are at their highest. “Every year we say that time is running out. We have to act NOW to slash greenhouse gas emissions if we are to have a chance to keep the increase in temperatures to manageable levels”. In 2016, the year-round average is expected to exceed 400ppm.

“We will soon be living with globally averaged Carbon dioxide levels above 400 parts per million as a permanent reality”, Jarraud said. “It means hotter global temperatures, more extreme weather events like heatwaves and floods, melting ice, rising sea levels and increased acidity of the oceans”.

With 60 per cent of methane emissions attributed to human activities like cattle farming and landfills, hikes in such emissions have boosted concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere to 254 percent of pre-1750 levels, WMO said.

The WMO also adds that this rise in carbon dioxide levels is now being amplified and triggered with higher levels of water vapor that are rising in the atmosphere due to higher carbon dioxide emissions. Indeed, the bulletin also points out that radiative forcing – the technical term used to describe the warming that affects Earth – rose by 36 percent between 1990 and 2014.

Jarraud is now urging nations to take immediate action to cut down greenhouse gas emissions where in a few weeks, negotiators from more than 190 nations will meet in Paris to form a new agreement of a UN climate deal. The Obama administration has pledged to reduce US emissions by up to 28 percent by the year 2030, compared with the baseline year of 2005.