2021 was the fifth warmest year in history.
The last seven years, including 2021, have been the warmest since annual temperatures began to be recorded globally in 1850, according to the data made public this Monday by Copernicus, the Climate Change Service of the European Union.
2021 was the fifth warmest year in history, with an average temperature of 0.3 degrees higher than that of the 1991-2020 reference period, and between 1.1 and 1.2 degrees above pre-industrial averages, according to Copernicus measurements, which also reveal that concentrations in CO2 atmosphere continued to rise throughout 2021, reaching a peak of 414 ppm.
The measures adopted by the countries to contain the expansion of the coronavirus in 2020 and 2021 managed to reduce slightly (about 5.5%) the emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming, but even so, “the bulk of emissions are still at the high level they had in 2018 or 2019 “, the director of Copernicus, Vincent-Henri Peuch, lamented at a press conference.
Worldwide, the increase in average temperature over the last 30 years was especially strong in Canada, the west coast of the United States and some regions of Central Africa and the Middle East, they assure from this service implemented by the European Center for Medium-Term Weather Forecasts (CEPMPM).
Europe experienced its ‘hottest summer’ in 2021, with a record temperature of 48.8 ºC, registered in Sicily -almost one degree higher than the previous maximum- and a series of extreme climatic events such as the heat waves suffered in the Mediterranean region (more acute in Spain, Italy and in Greece) or floods in Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
The forest fires preceded by “dry and hot conditions” devastated, above all, the eastern and central Mediterranean area, where Turkey was one of the most affected countries, although they were also suffered by Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania, North Macedonia , Algeria and Tunisia.
“All these events of last summer show that the frequency in which extreme meteorological phenomena occur has increased”, recalled in his speech Mauro Facchini, who heads the Copernicus unit within the European Commission, who has cited this fact among the consequences of the climate crisis.
Although these are exceptionally warm years, 2021 was not as hot as 2020 – which was also “La Niña” -, nor was it as hot as 2016, 2017 or 2019; and indeed in certain regions (Alaska, Australia, parts of Antarctica, western Russia and the extreme east of the country, and in the central and eastern Pacific) there were temperatures below the average for the reference period.
Record levels of methane accumulation
The new Copernicus data also shows that maximum and “worrying” levels of accumulation in the atmosphere of methane particles were reached in 2021, although it is still too early to determine the reason for this record, which could be due to natural causes (such as wetlands) or anthropogenic (such as agriculture or hydrocarbon production).
“The sources of methane are varied and complex,” stressed Peuch, who added that now the scientific community will face the “challenge” of study in depth this “worrying” increase in methane concentrations, which in 2021 reached approximately 1,876 parts per billion (ppb). (I)
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