Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels jumped by the highest number on record last year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported on Oct. 15, reaching a level higher than what any previous human civilization has experienced. The report concluded that global annual CO2 growth rates have tripled since the 1960s, creating more CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere than at any time in the past 800,000 years.
The WMO is a United Nations agency tasked with working on climate and weather affairs. The agency noted that methane and nitrous oxide, two other greenhouse gases, also hit new record highs.
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Coal, oil, gas and severe wildfires have all helped contribute to the trend, the report stated. And even as humans are contributing to more CO2 emissions, shrinking forests have less and less capacity to absorb those emissions, leading to a “vicious climate cycle” that produces increasingly extreme weather, according to AP News.
“Let there be no mistake, this is a very clear warning sign that the world is heading into an extremely dangerous state — and this is driven by the continued expansion of fossil fuel development, globally,” Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare said in response to the agency’s report, according to The Washington Post.
Experts warned that the Earth is on track to skyrocket past the 2015 Paris Climate Accord goals and are now predicting a global temperature increase from pre-industrial times of around 3 degrees Celsius, compared to the Paris goal of 1.5 degrees.
