UN rings alarm bells after Earth records its hottest decade, year ever
warmest 10-year period on record". "Earth's issuing a distress call," said UN chief Antonio Guterres, adding that the report showed "a planet on the brink". He also pointing out that "fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts", and warning that "changes are speeding up".
WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said that the average near-surface temperature is “dangerously close" to the 1.5-degree threshold that countries agreed to avoid passing in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. It was recorded to be 1.45 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels last year. “Never have we been so close.
It should be a red alert to the world," Saulo warned in a statement. "What we witnessed in 2023, especially with the unprecedented ocean warmth, glacier retreat and Antarctic sea ice loss, is cause for particular concern." The report said that the marine heatwaves were “especially worrying" as it gripped nearly a third of the global ocean on an average day last year. And by the end of 2023, more than 90 per cent of the ocean had experienced heatwave conditions at some point during the year, the WMO said.
More frequent and intense marine heatwaves will have "profound negative repercussions for marine ecosystems and coral reefs", it warned. Glacial retreat reached unprecedented levels, particularly in regions like western North America and Europe, where key glaciers experienced substantial ice loss. Alpine glaciers in Switzerland, for instance, diminished by 10 per cent of their remaining volume in just two years.
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