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Admittedly, I’ve lost track of how many ways I’ve constructed a headline with the words “record high temperatures” in the past few years. As annoying as it gets for some people to scroll across those statements in their news feed multiple times every week, I also realize the over-saturation of the topic makes it feel less and less like news. The truth is, it’s not just one story repeated and retyped out of boredom as much as it’s proof that the scientific community is uncovering new details within it.
The latest news about how the world is slowly ending by getting warmer comes with the annual “State of the Global Climate” report, wrapping up 2018. The 40-or-so pages comprising the report expound upon more of what we already know: 2015-2018 made up the warmest four-year stretch on record and by the U.N.’s estimation, mankind is steering the ship. The interesting or at least new information they presented with the report is that the effects of it all are “accelerating.”
When the annual report came out for the first time in 1993, carbon dioxide levels were at 357 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere. They’ve now risen to 405.5 ppm and the expectation is that this trend will continue. Temps, they say, are pushing 1°C warmer than between 1850-1900, which doesn’t sound like a lot. But their measurements show that the rate of increase now predicts that the increase will continue exponentially throughout the century.
“We know that if the current trajectory for greenhouse gas concentrations continues, temperatures may increase by 3 – 5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels by the end of the century and we have already reached one degree,” said Professor Samantha Hepburn, director of the Center for Energy and Natural Resource Law at Deakin University in Australia.
This has contributed to the global mean sea level rising 3.7 mm higher in 2018 than 2017 as well as the amount of ocean heat content found in the upper 700 meters of the ocean’s surface. Those temperatures, they say, are not warming at an even rate across the globe. Warming has reached the deepest layers in the southern hemisphere, which scientists have predicted will result in different rates of sea level change across the world as well.
“There is no longer any time for delay,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a foreword to the study. “It proves what we have been saying that climate change is moving faster than our efforts to address it.”
