This is what the planet will look like if the temperature rises more than 1.5 ° C 2:01
(CNN) -
The past seven years were the hottest on record, according to new data, as the Earth's temperature continues its precarious rise due to heat-trapping fossil fuel emissions.
A new analysis by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, which tracks global temperature and other climate indicators, reveals that 2021 was the fifth warmest year on record.
Although the long-term trend is upward, annual fluctuations in global temperature are expected, especially due to large-scale meteorological and ocean patterns, such as El Niño and La Niña, the latter present in 2021 and tending to cause a temperature cooler overall.
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"The most important thing is not to obsess over the classification of a particular year, but rather to see the big picture of constantly warming temperatures, and that constant warming does not mean that each year will be warmer than the next," said Freja Vamborg , Copernicus Principal Scientist. "But that's what we've seen so far, with each decade warmer than the last, and this is very likely to continue."
According to Copernicus, the average temperature of the Earth is around 1.1 ° C above the average levels of the pre-industrial era, which is 73% of the way towards the 1.5 ° C threshold that scientists They warn that the planet must maintain to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
This camera recorded how a glacier disappears in 6 weeks 0:43
Kim Cobb, director of the Global Change Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said a warming of 1.1 ° C is a "conservative" estimate.
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"It is very fair to say that 1.1 ° C is conservative, because the last half of the last decade has been warmer than the first," Cobb, who is not involved in the report, told CNN.
Even at 1.1 degrees, 2021 made it very clear that the world is already feeling the unprecedented effects of the climate crisis that many are unprepared for, including major thaws in the Arctic, deadly floods, unprecedented heat waves and historical droughts.
Copernicus also found that global concentrations of greenhouse gases, the root cause of the climate crisis and its increasingly severe disasters, continue to rise.
1.1 degrees Celsius
In 2015, world leaders agreed to heed scientists' warnings and limit the rapid rise in Earth's temperature to less than 2 ° C above pre-industrial levels, with a preferred target of 1.5 ° C.
That threshold may not sound like a lot, but NASA scientists say it's similar to how a 1 or 2 degree rise in body temperature can trigger a fever.
With each fraction of a degree of warming, the disease worsens and the likelihood of needing hospitalization increases.
An increase in global temperature of 1.5 degrees Celsius could be "catastrophic" for health, warn more than 230 publications
In the case of the planet, scientists are tracking the rise in the Earth's temperature from the baseline at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in the mid-to-late 19th century, when humans increased the burning of fossil fuels such as fuel. coal and oil.
An elderly woman is forced to leave her home as a forest fire ravages the island of Euboea, Greece, in August.
(Photo: Konstantinos Tsakalidis / Bloomberg)
Cobb says that for every future increase in warming, the latest climate research describes cascading consequences that would threaten all aspects and needs of the Earth, such as biodiversity, fresh water and the food supply.
"We have barely crossed the threshold of 1 degree of warming and yet we are experiencing an almost constant series of extreme weather and climate events," Cobb told CNN.
"With rare exceptions, these extremes can definitely be related to human-caused warming. In the future, we must expect the frequency and severity of these extremes to increase, taking a huge toll on societies around the world."
The year 2021 brought with it heat waves and floods that became mass casualty events;
rain fell on the summit of Greenland for the first time in history;
and a historic drought ravaged much of the western United States, causing large and destructive wildfires and unprecedented water shortages.
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Much of the western United States has been experiencing a historic and unforgiving drought, the worst in the region in at least 20 years.
The most severe drought is centered in the Southwest, in California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona.
But the areas of extreme and exceptional drought also extend to the Pacific Northwest.
This photo shows Lake Mead's Hoover Dam reservoir on June 9 with low water levels.
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In Portland, Oregon, people cool off at the Oregon Convention Center on Sunday, June 27.
Portland marked an all-time high of 44 degrees Celsius.
It topped it a day later with a high of 46.6 degrees.
(Credit: Nathan Howard / Getty Images)
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| During the drought, many areas have also had to cope with extreme heat. Heat and drought are part of a damaging feedback loop reinforced by climate change, experts say: the hotter it gets, the drier it becomes. And the drier it gets, the hotter it gets. In this photo Erik Schonberg cools off with a misting fan at the Tehama District Fairgrounds in Red Bluff, California. Sunday's high temperature at Red Bluff Municipal Airport was 40 degrees Celsius, according to the National Weather Service. (Credit: Mike Chapman / Record Searchlight / USA Today Network)
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Conditions are also fueling wildfires and exacerbating demand for water.
Carlos Torres drinks water Saturday as he searches for documents in his destroyed mobile home in Kelseyville, California.
A windswept brush fire burned three mobile homes, two separate garages and vehicles, a single-family home and outbuildings.
(Credit: Kent Porter / AP)
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Kayakers navigate the waters of Lake Powell in Page, Arizona, on June 24, 2021. (Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
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11-year-old John Elizondo throws a bucket of water on himself while playing in the Snake River at the edge of Asotin, Washington, on June 24.
(Credit: August Frank / The Lewiston Tribune / AP)
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Visitors to the park in Big Water, Utah, walk in an area of Lake Powell that used to be underwater at Lone Rock Beach.
(Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
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James Oehlerking spreads ice over a tub of bottled beer at Coors Field, the home of Major League Baseball's Colorado Rockies, on June 17.
Temperatures were above 37 degrees for the third day in a row in Denver.
(David Zalubowski / AP)
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A sign reads "stop and cool off" on a building on Lake Mead in Boulder City, Nevada, on June 16.
The lake is at its lowest water level on record since the reservoir filled up in the 1930s. (Credit: Kyle Grillot / Bloomberg / Getty Images
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People swim in a pool at the Circa Resort and Casino during an excessive heat warning in Las Vegas on June 16.
(Credit: Ronda Churchill / AFP / Getty Images)
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Gerry Huddleston cools off in the shallow waters of the Russian River in Healdsburg, California, on June 16.
(Credit: Kent Porter / The Press Democrat / AP)
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John Merizier stops at a water sprinkler along the Las Vegas Strip during the excessive heat warning on June 16.
(Credit: Ronda Churchill / AFP / Getty Images)
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A wildfire burns in a canyon wall south of St. Xavier, Montana, on June 15.
Record temperatures and gusty winds fueled a rapid spread of large fires in central and eastern Montana.
(Credit: Karl Big Hair / Bureau of Indian Affairs / AP)
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Adrian Keller, left, and Tim Smith fill a cooler with water at a Salvation Army heat relief station in Phoenix on June 15.
(Credit: Caitlin O'Hara / Getty Images)
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Rancher Jim Jensen, center, and Bill Jensen inspect a ditch they are working in to try to get more water to their ranch in Tomales, California, on June 8.
As the drought continues in California, many ranchers and farmers are beginning to see their wells and ponds run dry.
They have to make modifications to their existing water resources or truck water for their livestock.
(Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
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Cattle walk to a waterhole in Tomales, California, on June 8.
(Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
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This aerial photo shows houseboats anchored at Bidwell Canyon Marina in Oroville, California on June 1.
As water levels continued to drop in Lake Oroville, officials were signaling houseboats for removal to prevent them from getting stuck or damaged.
(Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
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This is what California's Lake Tule National Wildlife Refuge, near the Oregon border, looked like on May 28.
The area has been severely affected by drought and a lack of irrigation water from Upper Klamath Lake, which generally feeds the refuge.
(Credit: New York Times / Redux)
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This aerial photo shows rows of almond trees sitting on the ground during an orchard removal project in Snelling, California, on May 27.
Due to water shortages in the Central Valley, some farmers have to remove crops that require excessive irrigation.
(Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
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A firefighter inspects equipment in a Type 3 engine designed for ground fire suppression at a station in Oroville, California, on May 26.
(Credit: Patrick T. Fallon / AFP / Getty Images)
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A launch ramp, extended to accommodate low water levels, reaches California's Lake Oroville on May 22.
At the time of this photo, the reservoir was at 39% capacity and 46% of its historical average.
(Credit: Noah Berger / AP)
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Firefighters fight a wildfire in Santa Barbara, California, on May 21.
(Credit: AP)
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Clinton Jackson prepares to fill water tanks with recycled water in Oakley, California, on May 20.
The district opened its residential recycled water fill station earlier than usual to make recycled water available free of charge to Oakley and Bethel Island residents.
(Credit: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
Almost every corner of the world felt the effects of the planet's rapid warming.
The Copernicus researchers pointed to several regions with the highest average temperatures in 2021, from the western United States and Canada to Greenland, as well as wide swaths of central and northern Africa and the Middle East.
Last year's summer in Europe was the warmest on record, the agency reported, with several extreme weather events wreaking havoc across the continent, including deadly floods in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as intense forest fires in the eastern and central Mediterranean.
In North America, the analysis detected periods of incredible temperature deviations from the norm, including the scorching heat wave in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia.
The widespread effects of the Dixie fire, the second largest ever recorded in California, which spread the noxious smoke across the continent, were also seen.
As symptoms of a feverish planet worsen, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in August that the only way to halt the alarming trend is by drastically reducing emissions. greenhouse gases while eliminating the gases that warm the planet that humans have already introduced into the atmosphere.
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An "inspiring" reason for hope
In November, the Climate Action Tracker organization warned that the world is on track to reach 2.4 degrees of warming, if not more, despite countries' new climate commitments, including those agreed at the UN climate conference. held in Glasgow (COP26).
ANALYSIS |
COP26 concluded with a climate agreement.
In this he succeeded and in this the summit failed
Experts warned that global greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 will remain about double what is needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.
Worse, with current policies, not with proposals, but with what countries are doing right now, the organization expects global temperatures to rise a catastrophic 2.7 ° C.
At that time, the planet would be in a critical situation.
The Copernicus report showed that carbon emissions continued a precipitous trend in 2021, despite the global pandemic.
Emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas roughly 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term, continued to rise "very substantially."
Vamborg noted that the report serves as a reminder that increased greenhouse gas emissions are fueling the planet's rapid warming, adding that "the global temperature curve will continue to rise as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases."
Humanity's payoff for keeping the planet from exceeding 1.5 ° C, Cobb said, should be more than enough to spark bold and collective action.
Choosing to limit fossil fuel emissions to that point could "potentially cool the planet in the second half of this century."
"The idea that we can live to see a reversal of global warming is inspiring, as generations have witnessed decade after decade of warming," Cobb said.
"It is a future that is worth fighting for and giving life for, one energy option at a time."
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