The main greenhouse gases that cause climate change recorded new record concentrations in the atmosphere in 2018 and there is no visible sign of slowing down, the United Nations (UN) said today.
This wake-up call was made a few days before the annual UN meeting on combating climate change, COP25, which takes place from December 2 to 13 in Madrid.
"There are no signs of slowing down, much less of a reduction in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere despite all the commitments undertaken under the Paris Climate Agreement," said today the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, Peteri Talas, on the occasion of the publication of the organization's annual report on the concentration of these gases. .
The report does not state the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere but the amount that remains in it, knowing that the oceans absorb about a quarter of the total emissions, as does the biosphere, which includes forests.
According to scientists, carbon dioxide (CO2), which is associated with human activities and is the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, recorded a new concentration in 2018 of 407,8 parts per million (ppm), which is 147 percent higher than the level in pre-industrial period in 1750.
The organization stated that the annual increase in CO2 concentration is higher than the average increase in that concentration over the last ten years.
The concentration of methane (CH4), the second-ranked persistent greenhouse gas, and nitrous oxide (N2O) have also increased more than the annual average over the last decade.
Those two gases also reached record concentrations.
Sixty percent of methane emissions are of human origin - cattle breeding, rice cultivation, use of fossil fuels, as well as 40 percent of nitrogen suboxide - industrial processes, fertilizer.
Nitrous oxide also plays an important role in destroying the ozone layer that protects us from harmful ultraviolet rays.
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