U.N. warns of 'catastrophic consequences' for climate change

A truck engine is tested for pollution exiting its exhaust pipe near Mexico-U. In Otay Mesa, California, September 10, 2013. ReUTERS Mike Blake ZURICH, 16 Sept Reuters - The pace of climate change has not been slowed by the global COVID -19 pandemic and the world is behind in its fight to reduce carbon emissions, the United Nations said on Thursday.

The virus-related economic downturn caused only a temporary decrease in CO2 emissions last year and it was not enough to reverse the rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, said the World Meteorological Organization WMO.

Reduction targets are not being met and there is a rising likelihood the world will miss its Paris Agreement target to reduce global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, says the WMO in its United in Science 2021 Report.

Is this an alarming year for global warming? This year has seen fossil fuel emissions bounce back, greenhouse gas concentrations continuing to rise and severe human-enhanced weather events that have affected health, lives and livelihoods on every continent, he said.

Concentrations in the atmosphere of the largest greenhouse gases - CO2, methane and nitrous oxide - continued to increase in 2020 and the first half of 2021, said the U.N.

The average global temperature for the past five years was among the highest on record, estimated by 1.06 C to 1.26 C above pre-industrial levels.

There is now a 40% chance that preindustrial temperatures will be at least 1.5 C warmer than average global temperatures in one of the next five years, the report said.

Unless there are immediate, rapid and widespread reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to 1.5 C will be impossible, with catastrophic consequences for people and planet on which we depend, Guterres said.

The United in Science 2021 Report presents new scientific data and findings about climate change.

Throughout the pandemic we have heard that we must build back better to set humanity on a more sustainable path and to avoid the worst impacts of climate change on society and economies, said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

This report shows that so far in 2021 we are not going in the right direction, he told me.