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Greenhouse gases surge to new highs
Why it is in news?
- Planet-warming greenhouse gases surged to new highs as abnormally hot temperatures swept the globe and ice melted at record levels in the Arctic last year due to climate change, a major U.S. report .
- A host of indicators show that the world is warming as the burning of fossil fuels builds heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, said the annual State of the Climate for 2017 Report, issued by the American Meteorological Society and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Greenhouse gas surge
- Last year the top three most dangerous greenhouse gases released into Earth's atmosphere carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide reached new record highs.
- The annual global average carbon dioxide concentration at the Earth's surface climbed to 405 parts per million the highest in the modern atmospheric measurement record and in ice core records dating back as far as 800,000 years
- The global growth rate of CO2 has nearly quadrupled since the early 1960s.
Heat records
- The record for hottest year in modern times was set in 2016 but 2017 was not far behind, with "much-warmer-than-average conditions" across most of the world.
- Annual record high temperatures were observed in Argentina, Bulgaria, Spain and Uruguay, while Mexico "broke its annual record for the fourth consecutive year."
- Smashing more heat records, temperatures reached 110.1 degrees Fahrenheit (43.4 Celsius) on January 27 at Puerto Madryn, Argentina, "the highest temperature ever recorded so far south anywhere in the world."
- The world's highest temperature ever for May was observed on May 28 in Turbat, western Pakistan, with a high of 128.3 degrees Fahrenheit.
- The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998, with the four warmest years occurring since 2014.
- Last year marked either the second or third hottest since the mid 1800s, depending on which data is consulted.
- In another alarming milestone, 2017 was also "the warmest non-El Nino year in the instrumental record," referring to the absence of the occasional ocean warming trend that pushes temperatures higher than normal.
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