South Korea's annual average temperature has risen by 0.2 C every 10 years over the past century, which is three times faster than the global average, the chief of the state weather agency said Tuesday.
The country experienced a steep temperature rise of 0.2 C per decade on average, compared with the global average of 0.07 C from 1912 to 2020, according to Yoo Hee-dong, the chief of the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA).
Yoo cited a KMA report based on meteorological changes observed in the country over 109 years during a debate held at the National Assembly. Yoo disclosed the data with Chat GPT, a chatbot developed by U.S.-based Open AI.
"The talks on climate change are an extremely dangerous situation, which is like the end of the world," Yoo said, proposing sharing the compiled weather data with open API.
Global warming and urbanization have progressed faster in South Korea, bringing more extensive meteorological changes than the rest of the world over the past century, the KMA said.
The carbon dioxide density in South Korea ranged between 419.6 and 423.1 parts per million, while the global average was 415.7 ppm in 2021.
Moreover, there have been noticeable increases in the frequency of extreme weather events, such as heat waves and tropical nights.
Heat wave and tropical night days increased by 4.6 and 8.4 days, respectively, in the 2011-2020 period compared with the 1981-2010 period.
Source: Yonhap News Agency