Greenhouse gas emissions reached a record high in 2022 with “no end in sight to the rising trend”, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a report published on Wednesday.
The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin comes ahead of the UN climate change conference COP28 which opens in Dubai in two weeks.
Fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – account for most greenhouse gas emissions, which trap the sun’s heat, leading to global warming and climate change.
Methane concentrations also grew and levels of nitrous oxide, the third main gas, saw the highest year-on-year increase on record from 2021 to 2022.
“Despite decades of warnings from the scientific community, thousands of pages of reports and dozens of climate conferences, we are still heading in the wrong direction,” said Petteri Taalas, the WMO Secretary-General.
The current trajectory “puts us on the pathway of an increase in temperatures well above the Paris Agreement targets by the end of this century,” he added, referring to efforts to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
As a result, countries will experience more extreme weather, including intense heat and rainfall, ice melt, sea-level rise and ocean heat and acidification.
“The socioeconomic and environmental costs will soar,” he warned. “We must reduce the consumption of fossil fuels as a matter of urgency.”
WMO explained that just under half of CO2 emissions remain in the atmosphere, while over a quarter are absorbed by the ocean and just under 30 per cent by “land ecosystems” such as forests.