Major climate indicators set 'alarming' records in 2021, the U.N. says, "bringing us ever closer to climate catastrophe"
The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization issued yet another grim report about the state of our planet this week. In 2021, four of the seven major climate indicators – a set of parameters that hold key information about climate change – set “alarming” new records.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.