According to the State of the Climate report published by the US government on Wednesday, the annual rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels, has tripled since the 1960s, AFP reported.

In 2022, Earth’s atmosphere contained an average of 417 parts per million (ppm) of the main greenhouse gas, CO2. That’s 2.2 ppm more than in 2021, according to this annual international report from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Annual variations can be significant, but this increase in 2022 remains close to the 2010 average (2.4 ppm/year on average), three times the average increase measured in the 1960s (+0.8 ppm/year ) on top of Maun. Loa Volcano in Hawaii.

Not surprisingly, given the increase in human carbon emissions, this 2022 level is “the highest in the modern atmospheric record and in the 800,000-year paleoclimate record,” the report said.

And “the climate continued to respond to a constant increase in greenhouse gases and, as a result, warming,” American scientists note.

In 2022, temperatures broke records on several continents, with peaks above 50°C in Western Australia and 47°C in the southwestern United States. Heatwaves have wreaked havoc across South and East Asia, with China suffering its worst heatwave on record.

But tempered by the cooling effect of the natural La Niña phenomenon, 2022 was the fifth or sixth warmest year on record, according to data from various meteorological agencies around the world.

Despite three consecutive La Niña years that partially masked global warming, the years 2015-2022 were the eight warmest years on record. And 2023 is about to set a new all-time record, according to data released Wednesday by the European Copernicus Observatory.

The expansion of drought-affected areas worldwide, seen since mid-2019, has continued through 2022, according to the report. August 2022 set a new world record: 20% of the Earth’s surface was affected by moderate or severe drought.

More frequent and more intense heat waves also contributed last year to the second-largest loss of mass by mountain glaciers since the first satellite measurements were taken in the 1970s.

As for the seas that cover more than two-thirds of the globe, nearly 60 percent of surface waters have experienced at least one marine heat wave, according to the US agency.

This warming worsened significantly in 2023 for the oceans, which absorbed more than 90% of the excess human-caused heat.

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