Climate: faced with records for 2023, Guterres calls for a “life buoy” for the Earth | Climate change

The State of Climate Global 2023, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) report dedicated to the climate and its meteorological effects experienced by the Earth in the last year, reinforces what was already a certainty: in 2023, the planet experienced the hottest year on record. Over those 12 months, the average surface temperature was 1.45 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. At the same time, there were records in surface ocean temperatures and glaciers suffered the greatest loss of volume ever recorded.

“It was by far the hottest year on record”, writes the recently installed secretary general of the WMO, Celeste Saulo, who signed the report’s preface. “We have never been so close – although, for now, it is temporary – to the lower limit of 1.5 degrees of Paris Agreement about the climate change.”

Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth observation service, announced in January that the average temperature in 2023 was 1.49 degrees above pre-industrial values, remaining within a minimum distance of 1.5 degrees. The result now presented by the WMO, of 1.45 degrees, “is based on a synthesis of six sets of global temperature data”, reads the report. The year “2023 was the hottest in the 174-year instrumental record in each of the six data sets”, highlights the document.

According to WMO data, 2023 is 0.16 degrees ahead of the previous hottest year ever, 2016, which had an average temperature 1.29 degrees above pre-industrial values. By comparison, the year 2022 had an average temperature 1.15 degrees above pre-industrial values, according to the 2023 WMO report. La Nina for the El Niño the middle of 2023 contributed to the rapid increase in temperature from 2022 to 2023”, according to the WMO statement on the new report.

“The average global temperature of 2014-2023 is 1.20 degrees Celsius above the average of 1850-1900, and is the hottest ten-year period on record”, reads, in turn, in the new report.

This trend is the most evident consequence of the increase in the atmospheric concentration of gases with greenhouse effectsuch as carbon dioxide carbonemitted due to human hand during burning of fossil fuels, such as oil, natural gas and coal. With a more powerful greenhouse effect, more heat is retained in the atmosphere and oceans, triggering more extreme phenomena that affect rainfall, drought, storms and heat waves.

“Pollution caused by fossil fuels is causing unprecedented climate chaos”, warns António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations (UN), cited by Lusa. The WMO is a specialized agency of the UN.

The planet is “on the verge of collapse”, says António Guterres. But there is hope, he argues. “There is still time to throw a lifeline to people and the planet” he says. “Every fraction of a degree of global warming has an impact on the future of life on Earth.”

The report highlights not only the physical phenomena of climate change, such as the increase in temperature in the atmosphere and oceans, and the dynamics of the cryosphere, but also the major climate-related phenomena that will have dire consequences in 2023, such as the fires in Hawaii and in Canada and the cyclones that hit Libya, Mozambique and Mexico.

“The climate crisis is the defining challenge facing humanity,” says Celeste Saulo. “Climate change is much more than temperatures. What we have witnessed in 2023, especially ocean heat, glacier retreat and sea ice loss in Antarcticaunprecedented, are reasons for particular concern.”

Extreme phenomena and impacts

Ocean surface temperatures remained the highest ever from April onwards. The amount of heat trapped in the ocean reached its highest level in 2023. “Warming is expected to continue – a change that is irreversible on a scale of hundreds to thousands of years,” the statement reads.

The 60 reference glaciers used to study the cryosphere of the continents (Greenland and Antarctica are excluded) showed that during the hydrological year 2022-2023 the glaciers lost the largest amount of ice since 1950, when this record began. . This loss was, to a large extent, fueled by what happened in European and North American glaciers. “In Switzerland, glaciers have lost around 10% of their remaining volume in the last two years”, the statement reads.

Greenland, which experienced its hottest summer on record, lost 217 gigatons of ice during the 2022-2023 hydrological year. Antarctica had a year of minimums, reaching an absolute minimum of sea ice in February and between the months of June and November, the time of winter and spring in that region.

In relation to extreme eventsthe report refers to the effects of the cyclone Danielwhich caused more than 2000 deaths in Libya in September and caused torrential rains in Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey, from the cyclone Freddya prolonged storm with impacts in Mozambique, Madagascar and Malawi in March, the cyclone Mochawhich hit the Bay of Bengal, leaving 1.7 million people displaced in Sri Lanka, Burma and India in May, and the hurricane Otiswhich reached category five and devastated the coastal area of ​​Acapulco in Mexico, in October, killing 47 people and causing damage of 13.83 billion euros.

The year 2023 was also marked by intense fires in Canada, which burned 149,000 square kilometers (Portugal has an area of ​​92,212 square kilometers), the fire on the island of Maui, in Hawaii, which killed more than 100 people, a huge flood in the Horn of Africa, which displaced 1.8 million people in Ethiopia, Burundi, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia and Kenya, in addition to the extreme heat experienced in North Africa and the Mediterranean and prolonged droughts which reached parts of the Iberian Peninsula, Southwest and Central Asia, Central and South America.

“The dangers of climate and meteorology have exacerbated food security problems, population relocations and the impact on vulnerable populations”, the statement reads. “They continued to trigger prolonged relocations, whether new or secondary, and increased the vulnerability of many people who were already uprooted due to complex situations and multiple causes of conflict and violence”, warns the document, noting that these extreme phenomena worsen problems of hunger all over the world.

“I hope this report will raise awareness of the vital need to increase the scale of urgency and ambition of climate action”, concludes Celeste Saulo.

News updated at 3:30 pm on March 19th with statements by UN Secretary-General, António Guterres.