The State of the Climate In 2021
We all need to take stock on the state of the climate in 2021, following the turbulent year of 2020. From unprecedented wildfires across the US to the extraordinary heat of Siberia, the impacts of Climate Change were felt all over the world in 2020.
In his State of the Planet speech in December, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said “Covid and climate have brought us to a threshold.” As the past year of living in a pandemic has taught us, listening to the scientists on how to combat a crisis has never been more important. It’s also taught us that by acting early, we can limit how devastating the ramifications are.
So what exactly is the state of Climate Change today? Following is a round-up of where we are on Climate Change at the start of 2021, according to five crucial measures of climate health.
1. CO2 Levels
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere reached record levels in 2020, hitting 417 parts per million in May. The last time CO2 levels exceeded 400 parts per million was around four million years ago, during the Pliocene era, when global temperatures were 2-4℃ warmer and sea levels were 10-25 meters (33-82 feet) higher than they are now. The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere, as of May 2020, is the highest it has been in human history.
We are seeing record levels every year based on research by the CO2 program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which has been tracking CO2 concentrations from the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii since 1958. There were record levels set again this year despite Covid.
The effect of lockdowns on concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere was so small that it registers as a “blip”, hardly distinguishable from the year-to-year fluctuations of the carbon cycle, according to the World Meteorological Organization, and has had a negligible impact on the overall curve of rising CO2 levels.
We have put 100ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere in the last 60 years based on research by the Grantham Institute—Climate Change and Environment at Imperial College London. That is 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred towards the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago.
Based on worst-case scenario projections, by the end of this century levels of CO2 will be 800ppm. They’ve not been that high for 55 million years. There was no ice on the planet then and it was 12℃ warmer.
2. Record Heat
The past decade was the hottest on record. NASA data show that average global temperatures in 2019 were 1.8℉ (0.98℃) warmer than the 20th century average. In fact, the five warmest years in the 1880–2019 record have all occurred since 2015. Last year was one of the three warmest years on record, 2020 was more than 1.2℃ hotter than the average year in the 19th Century. In Europe it was the hottest year ever, while globally 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest.
Scientists expect this upward trajectory to continue, which they say is concerning considering the increase of just 1°C has already caused glaciers to melt, more extreme weather events to occur more frequently, oceans to warm and sea levels to rise.
Record temperatures, including 2016, usually coincide with an El Niño event (a large band of warm water that forms in the Pacific Ocean every few years), which results in large-scale warming of ocean surface temperatures. But 2020 was unusual because the world experienced a La Niña event (the reverse of El Niño, with a cooler band of water forming). In other words, without La Niña bringing global temperatures down, 2020 would have been even hotter!
The exceptionally warm temperatures triggered the largest wildfires ever recorded in the US states of California and Colorado, and the fires in eastern Australia, appropriately termed the “Black Summer.”
3. Arctic Ice
Nowhere is that increase in heat more keenly felt than in the Arctic. In June 2020, the temperature reached 38℃ in eastern Siberia, the hottest ever recorded within the Arctic Circle. The heatwave accelerated the melting of sea ice in the East Siberian and Laptev seas and delayed the usual Arctic freeze by almost two months.
Polar research from University College London showed the impact of those warm temperatures. On the Eurasian side of the Arctic Circle, the ice did not freeze until the end of October, which is unusually late. The summer of 2020 saw sea ice area at its second lowest on record, and sea ice extent (a larger measure, which includes ocean areas where at least 15% ice appears) also at its second lowest.
As well as being a symptom of Climate Change, the loss of ice is also a driver of it. Bright White Sea ice plays an important role in reflecting heat from the Sun back out into space, a bit like a reflective jacket. But the Arctic is heating twice as quickly as the rest of the world—and as less ice makes it through the warm summer months, we lose its reflective protection. In its place, large areas of open dark water absorb more heat, fueling global warming further.
Everything is interconnected. If one part of the climate system changes, the other parts of the same system respond to those changes. Polar research at the British Antarctic Survey shows that we are accelerating global warming by reducing the amount of Arctic sea ice.
Multi-year ice is also thicker and more reflective than the thin, dark seasonal ice that is increasingly taking its place. Between years 1979 and 2018, the proportion of Arctic sea ice that is at least five years old declined from 30% to 2%, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The loss of ice is believed to be disrupting weather patterns around the world already. According to the Grantham Institute, it is possible-though not yet conclusive-that 2018 Arctic conditions provoked the massive winter storm in Europe in 2018 by altering the jet stream (a current of air high in the atmosphere). Temperature difference between the equator and poles drives a lot of our large-scale weather systems, including the jet stream. And because the Arctic is warming faster than lower latitudes, there is a weakening of the jet stream.
4. Permafrost
Across the northern hemisphere, permafrost (the ground that remains frozen year-round for two or more years) is warming rapidly. When air temperatures reached 38℃ (100℉) in Siberia in the summer of 2020, land temperatures in several parts of the Arctic Circle hit a record 45℃ (113℉), accelerating the thawing of permafrost in the region. Both continuous permafrost (long, uninterrupted stretches of permafrost) and discontinuous (a more fragmented kind) are in decline.
Permafrost contains a huge amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs), including carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, which are released into the atmosphere as it thaws. Soils in the permafrost region, which spans around 23 million square kilometers (8.9 million square miles) across Siberia, Greenland, Canada and the Arctic, hold twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does—almost 1,600 billion tonnes. Much of that carbon is stored in the form of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming impact 84 times higher than CO2.
Thawing permafrost also damages existing infrastructure and destroys the livelihoods of the indigenous communities who rely on the frozen ground to move around and hunt. It is thought to have contributed to the collapse of a huge fuel tank in the Russian Arctic in May, which leaked 20,000 tonnes of diesel into a river.
5. Forests
Since 1990 the world has lost 178 million hectares of forest (690,000 square miles)—an area the size of Libya. Over the past three decades, the rate of deforestation has slowed but experts say it isn’t fast enough, given the vital role forests play in curbing global warming. From 2015 through 2020 the annual deforestation rate was 10 million hectares (39,000 square miles, about the size of Iceland), compared to 12 million hectares (46,000 square miles) in the previous five years.
Globally, forest areas continue to decline, but that there are big regional differences. While we are losing a lot of tropical forests in South America and Africa, we are also regaining temperate forests from tree planting or natural regeneration in Europe and Asia. Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia are the countries losing forest cover most rapidly. In 2020, deforestation of the Amazon rainforest surged to a 12-year high.
An estimated 45% of all carbon on land is stored in trees and forest soil. Globally, soils contain more carbon than all plants and atmosphere put together. When forests are cut down or burned, the soil is disturbed and carbon dioxide (CO2) is released. Eleven percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans are due to deforestation—comparable to the emissions from all of the passenger vehicles on the planet.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) launched a campaign this year to plant one trillion trees to absorb carbon. Planting trees might help cancel out the last 10 years of CO2 emissions but it cannot solve the climate crisis on its own. Since trees, especially hardwood trees, can take anywhere from 10 to 30 years to mature into adulthood and provide the greatest benefit; protecting existing forests is even more important than planting new ones.
Every time an ecosystem gets disturbed, carbon is lost. Allowing forests to regrow naturally and rewilding huge areas of land, a process known as natural regeneration, is the most cost-effective and productive way to capture CO2 and boost overall biodiversity. As well as showing how much the climate has changed already, these climate indicators also point the way to the solutions that can curb global warming to safer levels by the end of the century.
Nature Is an Untapped Solution
Tropical forests are incredibly effective at storing carbon, providing at least a third of the mitigation action needed to prevent the worst Climate Change scenarios. Yet nature-based solutions receive only 3% of all climate funding.
Natural climate solutions such as restoring degraded forests could create as many as 39 jobs per million dollars spent—that’s a job creation rate more than six times higher than the oil and gas industry. Eleven percent of the world’s population (800 million people) is currently vulnerable to Climate Change impacts such as droughts, floods, heat waves, extreme weather events and sea-level rise.
Coastal “Blue Carbon” Ecosystems are Critical
Just 0.7% of the world’s forests are coastal mangroves, yet they store up to 10 times as much carbon per hectare as tropical forests. 800,000 hectares lost every year. If we continue to lose mangroves at this rate, they may disappear within the next century. This loss, removes an important buffer from extreme weather for coastal communities and releases immense amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Return on Investment
Roughly 3.2 billion people are currently impacted by land degradation worldwide. Restoration is critical and cost-effective. Every US $1 invested in restoration generates, on average, 10x that amount in benefits. Conserving ecosystems is often more cost-effective than human-made interventions. In the Maldives, preserving the natural coral reef is four times cheaper than building a sea wall for coastal protection, even after 10 years of maintenance costs.
The True Cost
The cost of Climate Change is extreme-in both economic and human loss-leading economists to say addressing the crisis makes more fiscal sense. A price tag of $140 billion US per year. This is what it would take to make the changes humanity needs to adapt to a warming world. It may sound like a lot, but it’s less than 0.2% of global GDP.
The 2020 article “The Costs Of Achieving Climate Targets And The Sources Of Uncertainty,” published in the online journal Nature Climate Change found that keeping warming to 2°C would require a total global investment of $16 trillion and keeping warming to 1.5°C would cost $30 trillion, based on median estimates. Essentially, the cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of action.
The above estimates were based partly by protecting nature, and by limiting global warming to between 1.5°C and 2°C—the goal of the Paris Agreement, signed by 195 countries in 2015 and ratified by 189.
Moody’s Analytics predicts that the global economic damage of Climate Change is estimated to be $54 trillion by 2100 even if we manage to limit total warming to 1.5°C. If we limit it to 2°C, the economic damage will reach $69 trillion. This is because more frequent and intense extreme weather events will increasingly disrupt and damage critical infrastructure and property, while rising sea levels threaten coastal communities and island nations. And the cost will only increase the longer we make choices based on greed alone.
But right now, according to the United Nations (UN) and based on policies currently in effect, the world is heading for a temperature rise of 3.2°C by the end of the century. The UN also urges governments to urgently introduce and execute aggressive climate policies if they want to mitigate these estimates.
The Extreme Wealth-Climate Change Connection
The combined emissions of the world’s richest one per cent are twofold the combined emissions of the poorest 50 per cent. Yes, read that again. According to the UN, the combined emissions of the richest one per cent of the global population account for more than twice the combined emissions of the poorest 50 per cent. The UN added that the wealthiest one per cent of the global population need to reduce their footprint by a factor of 30 to stay in line with the Paris Agreement targets. Despite emitting only a fraction of the greenhouse gases that cause warming, these developing countries will be the hardest hit by Climate Change.
Renewable Energy
In October 2020, the International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental organization concluded that solar power is the cheapest source of electricity in history. As investments in wind, solar and battery energy grows, the price of renewables will fall further. Renewables are making it more accessible for governments to not only set themselves net zero carbon emission goals, but to achieve them as well. And making renewable energy a more attractive economic option for governments, businesses and individuals alike.
Whilst it’s a sign of hope, it will still take the united action of all to combat this climate crisis. Human activities are at the root of mankind’s descent towards chaos. But that also means human action can help solve it, with a little help from nature itself. Protecting nature today means a better planet for future generations. Sharing these facts about Climate Change can help make a difference.
Sources and Photo Credits:
The state of the climate in 2021
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210108-where-we-are-on-climate-change-in-five-charts
By Isabelle Gerretsen, 10th January 2021, with data research by Miriam Quick
Climate Change: 11 Facts You Need To Know
https://www.conservation.org/stories/11-climate-change-facts-you-need-to-know
Five important facts you likely don’t know about climate change
https://www.mamamia.com.au/facts-about-climate-change-2021/
Billi Fitzsimons, April 21, 2021