A new study has found that Anaesthetic gases could be raising earth's temperature. Anaesthetic gases, which help doctors to cause temporary loss of sensation in patients and perform surgery smoothly, have been contributing to climate change.

According to the study, during the last ten years, concentrations of the anaesthetics desflurane, isoflurane and sevoflurane have been rising across the globe. The study detected the compounds as far as Antarctica.

Researchers of the study said that like carbon dioxide, which is responsible for climate change, anaesthesia gases also allow earth's atmosphere to store more energy from the sun, which could contribute to climate change. But unlike CO2, the gases are extra potent in their greenhouse-gas effects, as per the researchers.

Martin Vollmer, an atmospheric chemist at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology in Dubendorf and lead author of the study, said, "One kilogram of desflurane, for instance, is equivalent to 2,500 kilograms of carbon dioxide in terms of the amount of greenhouse warming potential. On a kilogram-per-kilogram basis, it is so much more potent than carbon dioxide".

According to the researchers, atmospheric concentration of desflurane in 2014 was about 0.30 parts per trillion (ppt). Atmospheric concentration of halothane was 0.0092 ppt, while Isoflurane and sevoflurane came in at 0.097 ppt and 0.13 ppt respectively, the researchers said.

As per the researchers, they did not include the common anaesthesia nitrous oxide in the new study as it has many sources other than anaesthetics. A reviewer of the study, Jodi Sherman from Yale University School of Medicine, stated that abundance of anaesthesia gas has been growing and should be overlooked. According to Sherman, there is nothing unique about desflurane that cannot be done with other drugs. She also said that it is possible to live without Desflurane.