Antarctic ice loss has increased and global carbon-dioxide emissions are at record highs two years on from Paris climate agreement

Emissions from energy use rose 1.6 per cent in 2017; Antarctica is tripling the rate at which it melts

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Smoke billows out of chimneys at a chemical plant in Tianjin in northern China. A new report found that the world’s output of carbon dioxide, the gases behind climate change, surged to a record in 2017. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 4:59am, 14 Jun 2018Updated: 6:37am, 14 Jun 2018

Two years after roughly 200 nations forged a new United Nations deal to protect the climate, the output of the gases that are blamed for global warming surged to a record, while ice loss in the Antarctic has tripled.

Carbon dioxide emissions from energy use climbed 1.6 per cent in 2017, with both emerging and developed economies contributing to the increase, according to BP Plc data published Wednesday.

Also on Wednesday, a landmark study was published estimating that Antarctica has lost a staggering three trillion tonnes of ice since 1992, with 40 per cent of that loss occurring in the last five years.

That rate is a three-fold increase in the pace at which Antarctica is shedding its mass, a consortium of 84 scientists reported in the journal Nature, and suggests that the shrinking continent could redraw Earth’s coastlines if global warming continues unchecked.

According to recent research from a global collaboration of scientists, the Antarctic ice sheet has tripled its rate of ice loss over the last 25 years. Photo: The Record via TNS

BP’s data is among the first that provides an estimate of national emissions output for the year. Official data is published later and covers a wider range of greenhouse gases.

In the US, which intends to withdraw from the UN’s 2015 Paris accord, greenhouse-gas output fell for a third year.