The oceans will be warmer in 2021, with rising sea levels and increasing seawater acidity

The sea temperature in the oceans reached a record high around the world last year. This is also true of seawater acidification, while the continuous melting of the ice sheet, combined with rising water temperatures, has pushed sea level to unprecedented heights. This is the conclusion of the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in its annual report The state of the global climate†

The fourth record from last year is related to global greenhouse gas emissions. These are again troubling conclusions about four key climate indicators. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) does not note, for the first time, that human actions are leading to far-reaching changes and harmful and long-term consequences for land, seas and the atmosphere.

Extreme weather (the daily face of climate change, according to the World Meteorological Organization) will cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage by 2021. The effects of all heat waves, wildfires, floods, and other climate-related disasters have claimed many lives and come at the expense of well-being, food and water security.

Global sea level has risen at a rate of 4.5 mm per year over the past ten years. Compared to the decade between 1993 and 2002, the increase between 2013 and 2021 more than doubled.

The direction is not reversed

The past seven years have been the warmest since records began. In 2021, at the beginning and end of the year, there was talk of La Niña, a climatic phenomenon in which warm waters are pushed off the coast of Latin America, creating a temporary cold current.

As a result, temperatures were slightly lower than in 2020, but this did not reflect the trend of increasing average global temperatures.

The average global temperature last year was 1.11 degrees above pre-industrial levels. And in the 2015 Paris Agreement, it was agreed to limit the global average increase to a maximum of two degrees and no less than 1.5 degrees.

Last week, the WMO itself presented an analysis that showed the average global temperature could rise by 1.5 degrees as early as 2026. The World Meteorological Organization estimates that the probability of that happening is close to 50 percent. 2016 was the hottest year yet, when it was 1.2 degrees warmer than it was before the Industrial Revolution.