The annual State of the Local weather report by the UN’s World Meteorological Group (WMO) confirmed preliminary information exhibiting 2023 was by far the most popular yr ever recorded. And final yr was a part of “the warmest 10-year interval on report”, the WMO climate and local weather company mentioned, with even hotter temperatures anticipated going ahead.
“There’s a excessive likelihood that 2024 will once more break the report of 2023”, WMO local weather monitoring chief Omar Baddour advised reporters.
Reacting to the report, UN chief Antonio Guterres mentioned it confirmed “a planet on the brink”.
“Earth’s issuing a misery name,” he mentioned in a video tackle, declaring that “fossil gas air pollution is sending local weather chaos off the charts”, and warning that “modifications are dashing up”.
The WMO mentioned that final yr the typical near-surface temperature was 1.45 levels Celsius above pre-industrial ranges — dangerously near the vital 1.5-degree threshold that international locations agreed to keep away from passing within the 2015 Paris local weather accords.
Far more than temperatures
“By no means have we been so shut… to the 1.5C decrease restrict of the Paris Settlement,” WMO chief Celeste Saulo warned. “I’m now sounding the purple alert in regards to the state of the local weather,” she advised reporters, lamenting that “2023 set new information for each single local weather indicator”.
The organisation discovered that lots of the information had been “smashed” and that the numbers “gave ominous new significance to the phrase ’off the charts’.”
Saulo burdened that local weather change was about far more than temperatures. “What we witnessed in 2023, particularly with the unprecedented ocean heat, glacier retreat and Antarctic sea ice loss, is trigger for specific concern,” she mentioned.
One particularly worrying discovering was that marine heatwaves gripped almost a 3rd of the worldwide ocean on a median day final yr. And by the tip of 2023, greater than 90 % of the ocean had skilled heatwave situations sooner or later throughout the yr, the WMO mentioned. Extra frequent and intense marine heatwaves may have “profound destructive repercussions for marine ecosystems and coral reefs”, it warned.
On the similar time, it warned that key glaciers worldwide suffered the most important lack of ice ever since information started in 1950, “pushed by excessive soften in each western North America and Europe”. In Switzerland, the place the WMO is headquartered, Alpine glaciers had misplaced 10 % of their remaining quantity previously two years alone, it mentioned.
The Antarctic sea ice extent was additionally “by far the bottom on report”, WMO mentioned.
Rising sea ranges
In truth, it identified, its most space on the finish of the southern winter was round a million sq. kilometres beneath the earlier report yr — equal to the dimensions of France and Germany mixed.
Ocean warming and the quickly melting glaciers and ice sheets additionally drove the ocean degree final yr to its highest level since satellite tv for pc information started in 1993, WMO mentioned. The company burdened that the worldwide imply sea degree rise over the previous decade (2014-2023) was greater than double the speed within the first decade of satellite tv for pc information.
It highlighted that dramatic local weather shifts are taking a heavy toll worldwide, fuelling excessive climate occasions, flooding and drought, which set off displacement and drive up biodiversity loss and meals insecurity.
“The local weather disaster is THE defining problem that humanity faces and is carefully intertwined with the inequality disaster,” Saulo mentioned.
’Glimmer of hope’
The variety of people who find themselves thought of acutely meals insecure all over the world has greater than doubled, from 149 million folks previous to the Covid-19 pandemic to 333 million on the finish of 2023, WMO identified.
The organisation did nevertheless spotlight one “glimmer of hope”: surging renewable power technology. Final yr, renewable power technology capability — primarily from photo voltaic, wind and hydropower — elevated by almost 50 % from 2022, it mentioned.
Guterres additionally emphasised that there was nonetheless time to avert a chronic disaster. The world, he insisted, nonetheless has an opportunity to maintain the planet’s long-term temperature rise beneath the 1.5C threshold and “keep away from the worst of local weather chaos”.
“We all know do it.”
