DUBAI: The UN weather agency World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday that 2023 is all but certain to be the hottest year on record, and warning of disturbing trends that suggest increasing floods, glacier melt, forest fires, and heat waves in the future.
WMO also warned that the average temperature for the year is up some 1.4 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times – a mere 1-tenth of a degree under a target limit for the end of the century as laid out by the Paris climate agreement in 2015.
WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said the onset earlier of El Nino at the start of this year, the weather calamity marked by heating in the Pacific Ocean, could tip the average temperature in 2024 over the 1.5-degree (2.7 degrees) Fahrenheit) target cap set in Paris.
Petteri Taalas said in an interview that it is practically sure that during next four years we will hit this 1.5, at least on a temporary basis. In the next decade the globe is more or less going to be there on a permanent basis.
UN issues finding for start of Climate summit
WMO issued the findings for Thursday’s start of the Uited Nations’ annual climate conference, this year being held in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) city of Dubai.
The UN agency said the benchmark of key Paris agreement goal will be whether the 1.5-degree increase is sustained over a thirty-year span – not just a single year – but others say the world needs more clarity on that.
Richard Betts of Britain’s Met Office said that clarity on breaching the Paris accord guard rails will be crucial.
The lead author of a new paper on the issue with University of Exeter published in the journal Nature said that without an accord on what actually will count as exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, we risk distraction and confusion at precisely the time when action to avoid the worst effects of climate change becomes even more urgent.
WMO’s Taalas said that whatever the case, the globe appears on course to blow well past that figure anyway.
He added that we are heading towards 2.5 to 3 degrees warming and that would mean that we would see more negative impacts of climate change.
WMO said that nine years from 2015 to 2023 were the warmest on record.
