According to the WMO Climate report, 2023 was the warmest year.
Worldwide temperature records were “smashed” last year, the UN reported Tuesday, March 19, 2024, with 2023 completing the warmest year in history, as extreme heat observed seas and glaciers losing historic ice. The United Nations(UN) World Meteorological Organization (WMO) presented its yearly
State of the Weather report, verifying early statistics that 2023 was, in fact, the warmest year on record.
According to the WMO study, it happened near the end of “the hottest 10-year period on record.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the report highlighted “a planet on the edge. Earth is transmitting an upsetting shout, ” noting that “fossil fuel pollution is pushing climate disaster off the scales” and warned that “things are moving forward rapidly.
According to the World Meteorological Organization, the average near-surface temperature increased 1.45 degrees Celsius earlier than industrial times last year, alarmingly close to the critical 1.5-degree difficulties countries committed not to exceed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
Globally Red Alarm:
“We have never been so near to the 1.5C temperature limit of the Paris Agreement,” WMO Director Andrea Celeste Saulo said in a statement. She described the findings as a “red alarm to the entire world.”
After analyzing the data, the organization discovered that “records were yet again broken, and even in some cases cracked,” warning that the figures “gave alarming new meaning to the term ‘off the scales.’
WMO Director Andrea Celeste Saulo clarified that climate change is far more than just temperatures. “What we saw in 2023, notably the dramatic ocean warming, glacier melt, and Antarctic Sea ice loss is also a reason for major alarm.”
Another particularly alarming discovery was that marine heatwaves affected approximately one-third of the worldwide ocean on an average day during the previous year. According to the World Meteorological Organization, by the end of 2023, over ninety percent of the ocean will have suffered heatwave conditions at least once.
The report said more serious and powerful marine heatwaves will have “an important factor negative effects for the marine ecosystems and coral underwater areas.” At the same time, it pointed out that important glaciers globally have lost the most ice since records began in 1950 “due to large-scale melt in both western North America and Europe.
According to the report, alpine glaciers in Switzerland, where the WMO is based, for example, have lost 10% of their left volume in the last two years alone. The WMO further stated that the Antarctic Sea ice volume was “by much the most minimal on record.“
Read More: IMF requests that Pakistan legalize cryptocurrency trading: sources
Although it stated that the greatest amount of land at the conclusion of the southern winter was around one million square kilometers less than the previous record year, which is like the combined area of France and Germany, the ongoing heating of the oceans, along with fast-melting glaciers and ice sheets, caused sea levels to rise to their highest height since satellite records began in 1993, according to the WMO.
The UN agency highlighted that the worldwide average sea level increase over the previous decade (2014-2023) was over two times the amount of the first decade of satellite measurements.
It noted that severe climate changes are putting a severe burden on people globally, generating severe weather conditions such as flooding and drought, which result in shifting and resulting in declines in biodiversity and a shortage of food.”The catastrophe of climate change is THE basic challenge humans face,” Saulo stated.
Renewable Energy:
According to the WMO, the estimated total number of people worldwide who are categorized as highly starving has more than doubled, rising from 149 million before the COVID-19 epidemic to 333 million by the end of 2023. The UN’s weather and environment office continued to identify one “glimmer of hope”: increased renewable energy output. Moreover, according to the report, renewable energy generating capacity reached about 50% last year compared to 2022.
UN chief Antonio Guterres also underlined the positive aspects of the study. He clarified that the world still has a chance to limit the planets to a long-term temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid “the greatest possible risk of climate calamity.”
About The Author
