Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide which contribute to global warming reached record levels in 2006, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on November 22.
The rise in carbon dioxide emissions is chiefly due to fossil fuel combustion, such as coal power stations, the WMO said. The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the world's atmosphere rose 0.53 percent from 2005 to 318.2 parts per billion (ppb), while nitrous oxide (N2O) was up 0.25 percent at 320.1 ppb, the WMO said in its latest Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.
CO2 remains the most important of the greenhouse gases, making up 63 percent of the total, and over the past five years it has been responsible for 91 percent of the increase in "radiative forcing," or global warming, the World Meteorological Organisation said.
Methane emissions by contrast have remained stable, up just 0.06 percent. The WMO's data follows a study earlier this week by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which also found that emissions from industrialised nations had scaled new heights in 2006.
The latest forecasts come hot on the heels of a grim report by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which said evidence of the planet's warming was now "unequivocal" and the effects on the climate system could be "abrupt or irreversible."
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