Guterres comments ‘Planet on brink’ on WMO’s report

UNITED NATIONS: The recent United Nations report has stated that the global heat records were “smashed” last year, with 2023 rounding out the hottest decade on record. UN Chief Antonio Guterres said that the report showed “a planet on the brink.”

The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organisation(WMO) issued its annual state of the Climate report, confirming preliminary data indicating that 2023 was by far the hottest year ever recorded. The report mentioned that the average near–surface temperature was 1.45 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels last year -dangerously close to the critical 1.5-degree threshold that countries agreed to avoid passing in the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.

”Never have we been so close to the 1.5 degree Celsius lower limit of the Paris Agreement,” Andrea Celeste Saulo, Chief of WMO stated. “The report should be seen as a red alert to the world,” she warned.

Saulo further added, “What we witnessed in 2023, especially with the unprecedented ocean warmth, glacier retreat, and Antarctic sea ice loss, is cause for particular concern.”

On an average day last year, nearly a third of the global ocean was affected by marine heatwaves, WMO highlighed. “And by the end of 2023, more than 90 percent of the ocean had experienced heatwave conditions at some point during the year,” WMO added.