‘High probability’ that 2024 will be warmest year on record: UN

Geneva. There is a high probability that 2024 will be the warmest year on record, after the decade ending in 2023 broke a heat record that pushes the planet at the edge of the abyssThe United Nations (UN) warned yesterday.

In the State of the Climate report, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has sounded the alarm Red alert and confirmed preliminary data showing that 2023 will see unprecedented levels of heat since measurements began 174 years ago. Records were once again broken, and in some cases broken, for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice cover and retreat of the glaciershe points out.

We can’t say for surebut I would say there is a high probability that 2024 will break the record of 2023declared Omar Baddour, in charge of climate observation at the WMO, during the presentation of the report.

The agency confirmed that 2023 had a global average near-surface temperature of 1.45 degrees Celsius (with an uncertainty margin of 0.12 degrees) above the pre-industrial baseline.

“We have never been so close – even temporarily – to the lower limit of 1.5 degrees of the Paris Agreement on climate change,” Celeste Saulo, Secretary General of the WMO, said in a statement.

The climate crisis is the defining challenge facing humanity and is closely intertwined with the inequality crisis, as demonstrated by growing food insecurity, population displacement and biodiversity loss.he added.

On a typical day in 2023, nearly a third of the oceans were affected by a marine heatwave, damaging vital ecosystems and food systems. By the end of that year, more than 90 percent of the seas had experienced heat waves at some point, which the agency described as especially worrying.

The global set of reference glaciers suffered the largest ice loss ever recorded (since 1950), driven by extreme melting in both western North America and Europe, according to preliminary data.

Antarctic sea ice extent was by far the lowest on record, with the peak extent at the end of winter one million square kilometers below the previous year’s record, equivalent to the size of France and Germany combined.

Another factor of concern is that the continuous warming of the oceans, which expands the volume of water, in combination with the melting of glaciers led in 2023 to a rise in sea level to a maximum since satellite records began in 1993.

The WMO pointed out that in the past 10 years the rate of rise in average sea level around the world was more than double that of the first decade in which this indicator began to be measured.

He indicated that these changes generate extreme climate phenomena, including droughts and floods, which have serious repercussions such as population displacement, loss of biodiversity and food insecurity.

According to the World Meteorological Organization report, the number of people suffering from acute food insecurity in the world increased from 149 million before the covid pandemic to 333 million individuals in 2023.

On a positive note, the UN agency highlighted that there are a substantial energy transition underway and that last year the capacity to incorporate renewable energies increased 50 percent compared to 2022.

Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, stated that this report shows that the planet is on the edge of the abyss.

For him, there is still a chance to keep the long-term increase in the planet’s temperature below the 1.5 degree threshold in order to avoid the worst of climate chaos.