The global concentration of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at its highest ever, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said yesterday.
According to UN spokesman Martin Nesirky, UNFCCC reported that “the concentration has passed the 400 parts per million mark.”
He added that UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres called for a greatly stepped-up response to climate change by all parts of society and warned that “we have entered a new danger zone.”
The UN statement came as governments will be meeting on June 3- 14 in Bonn, Germany for the next round of climate change talks.
“A central focus of the talks will be the negotiations to build a new global climate agreement and to push for greater immediate climate action,” Nesirky said.
“The world must wake up and take note of what this means for human security, human welfare and economic development,” Nesirky quoting Figueres said.
“In the face of clear and present danger, we need a policy response which truly rises to the challenge,” she said, urging a “greatly stepped-up response across all three central pillars of action: action by the international community, by government at all levels, and by business and finance.”
The statement follows the announcement that global concentrations of heat-trapped carbon dioxide in the atmosphere last week passed the 400 parts per million mark, which impacts efforts to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels.
The new measurement came from the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, which later revised the reading to 399.89, according a report by the Los Angles Times.
According to media reports, the last time the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was at such high level was during an epoch called the Pliocene when the daily temperature was much warmer, when the ice caps are smaller and the sea level rise as much as 80 feet.[PNA/Xinhua]
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