The data behind the blinking lights of climate breakdown - UN Environment

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“The project is global with overarching environmental policy relevance and impact,” says Pascal Peduzzi, director of UNEP-GRID-Geneva. “The portal includes geo-referenced, remote-sensing and earth observation information integrated with statistics and data on the environmental dimension of sustainable development.

“The World Environment Situation Room collates climate data in near real-time and is painting a worrying picture. Monthly global temperatures for January, February, March and July 2020, were the second warmest since records began in 1880, while in April, May and June 2020 they were the warmest ever on record since 1880,” says Peduzzi.

CO2 concentration has increased 1.3 times since 1960

The value for each month is an average of the preceding 12 months. The graph shows that not only is the CO2 concentration increasing, but the amount of increase is speeding up. While the increase over a 12-month period was 1 ppm in the 1970s, it now exceeds 2.4 ppm per year on average. See interactive version of the graph here.

It’s important to note that the global trend in increase of CO₂ concentration is not only rising but accelerating. In 1960 it was +0.9 parts per million (ppm) per year, in 1980 +1.21 ppm; in 2000 +1.83 ppm and in 2020 it is +2.51 ppm/year. The average increase over the last 12 months is 2.81 ppm. By comparison, the average increase for the previous 12 months was +2.19 ppm.

While the COVID-19 pandemic reduced global energy demand in the first quarter of 2020 by 3.8 per cent relative to the first quarter of 2019, it has not yet had a clear impact on total CO₂ emissions.

“There is a strong correlation in the long-term trends between CO₂ emissions and atmospheric CO₂ levels,” says UNEP climate expert Niklas Hagelberg. “We’re in danger of missing key Paris Climate Agreement goals as the emissions gap widens.”

UNEP and partners are shifting the needle in terms of knowledge platforms and sustainable solutions for policymakers in areas such as renewable energy, sustainable heating and cooling systems, greener cities, sustainable cement, better understanding of the oceanic carbon cycle, sustainable agriculture and more.

UNEP’s next Emissions Gap Report is due to be published in December 2020.

For more information, please contact Pascal Peduzzi: [email protected] or Niklas Hagelberg: [email protected]

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