GENEVA: Surging carbon dioxide levels boosted greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere to a new high in 2013, amid worrying signs that absorption by
land and sea is waning, the UN warned Tuesday.
"An alarm bell
is ringing," Michel Jarraud, head of the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO), told reporters in Geneva. In its annual report on Earth-warming
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the UN agency said concentrations of carbon
dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide all broke records in 2013. "We know without any doubt that our
climate is changing and our weather is becoming more extreme due to human
activities such as the burning of fossil fuels," Jarraud said.
"We must reverse
this trend by cutting emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases across the
board," he in a statement, and warned: "we are running out of
time."
Especially worrying, Jarraud said, was the sharp rise in
CO2, by far the main culprit in global warming, to 396 parts per million in the
atmosphere last year. That was 142 percent of levels prior to the year 1750,
and marked a hike of 2.9 parts per million between 2012 and 2013 -- the largest
annual increase in 30 years. It was not clear why concentrations rose so
sharply, but Jarraud suggested it could be due to a shift in the ability of oceans
and the biosphere to absorb emissions.
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