The oceans reached a new record level of warming and acidity in 2021, according to a report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), warning that the war in Ukraine threatens to achieve its goals in the fight against global warming.

In its annual report "The State of the Global Climate", published on Wednesday, the WMO confirms that the last seven years have been the warmest since the beginning of the measurements.

Meteorological phenomena related to La Nina at the beginning of 2021 had a cooling effect on world temperatures last year. But despite this, 2021 is still one of the warmest since the beginning of the measurements, with an average temperature of 1,11 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

With the Paris Agreement of 2015, the signatory countries undertook to limit global warming to +1,5 degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial era. "And now we are moving towards a warming of 2,5 to 3 degrees instead of 1,5," said WMO Secretary-General Petri Thalas.

"The climate is literally changing before our eyes," he said. "The heat caused by greenhouse gas emissions responsible for human activity will warm the planet for many generations to come." "Rising sea levels, warming and the acidity of the oceans will continue for hundreds of years unless ways are devised to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere," Thalass told reporters.

To make matters worse, other crises, such as the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, have shifted the focus from the climate to the background. The pandemic imposed by countries over the pandemic had no effect on greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, Thalas said. But that's why the war in Ukraine has brought new threats.

Selvin Hart, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, special climate adviser, has criticized countries for failing to meet climate commitments over a conflict that has fueled energy prices and European nations trying to find an alternative to Russian gas.

"We see that large economies are choosing ways that, frankly, can potentially maintain high levels of CO2 emissions, which brings high pollution and jeopardizes the achievement of climate goals," Hart said.