The earth is setting new heat records: According to the UN, the past ten years have been the hottest decade since temperature records began. At the same time, the past year 2023 was the hottest since records began, as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday when presenting its annual report in Geneva. The warming of the oceans, the retreat of glaciers and the melting of the polar ice caps are deeply worrying, said WMO chief Andrea Celeste Saulo.
The numerous heat records showed a “planet on the edge of the abyss,” warned UN Secretary General António Guterres: “The Earth is sending a cry for help.” The continued use of fossil fuels is leading to unprecedented “climate chaos”. At the same time, climate change is rapidly accelerating, warned Guterres.
According to the WMO annual report, average surface temperatures last year were 1.45 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era – and therefore just below the limit of 1.5 to 2.0 degrees that the international community set in the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. to avert climate change with catastrophic consequences.
“Never before have we been so close to the lower limit of the Paris Agreement,” warned WMO boss Saulo. The annual report is a “red warning signal to the world”. Climate records were not only broken last year, “but in some cases downright shattered.” At the same time, there is a “high probability” that 2024 will be even hotter than the previous year and therefore the hottest since records began, said WMO expert Omar Baddour.
What’s particularly worrying, according to the report, is that nearly a third of the oceans were warmer than average on every day last year. Overall, one or more heat waves were recorded in 90 percent of the world’s oceans in 2023, the WMO said. More frequent and more intense periods of ocean warming would have “profound negative consequences” for marine ecosystems and coral reefs.
According to the report, the world’s glaciers recorded the largest ice decline last year since records began in 1950. Europe and western North America were particularly affected. The Swiss glaciers have lost ten percent of their volume in the last two years alone.
Continued ocean warming and melting of glaciers and polar ice caps have caused sea levels to rise to their highest level since satellite records began in 1993, according to the report. On average, sea level has risen more than twice as fast in the past ten years as in the previous decade.
The climate crisis is currently the greatest challenge facing humanity and is closely linked to growing inequality, explained Saulo. Food insecurity caused by extreme weather events such as heat, drought or floods affected around 333 million people worldwide at the end of 2023 – more than twice as many as before the Corona crisis that began at the end of 2019.
According to the WMO, there is still a “glimmer of hope”: energy production capacities from renewable sources such as solar cells and hydroelectric power plants increased by almost 50 percent last year. The world still has the chance to meet the 1.5 degree target and “prevent the worst climate chaos,” said UN Secretary General Guterres: “We know how to do it.”
