The UN weather organization published its preliminary report for this year at the start of the climate conference in Dubai. Even without November and December data included, climate experts estimate that 2023 will be the warmest year since industrialization.
More and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are causing “a turbo-driven, dramatic acceleration of ice melt and sea level rise,” as the World Weather Organization (WMO) announced on Tuesday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai. Climate change has accelerated rapidly over the past decade.
These are the key points from the report:
Temperatures are rising
The WMO’s preliminary report on the state of the world’s climate says that 2023 will be the warmest year on record: “Data up to the end of October show that the year will be about 1.40 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial reference line (1850- 1850) will lie. 1900) lay». This phase of early industrialization is considered the reference era for the global goal of keeping average temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees.
“In July, August, September and October this year, global average temperatures each reached monthly records,” the report says.
The world’s oceans are warming
Sea surface temperatures have recorded highs every month. “It was exceptionally warm in the eastern North Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, as well as in large parts of the Southern Ocean, where extensive marine heat waves occurred,” the WMO wrote.
The oceans are also getting warmer. All data sets agree that ocean warming has increased particularly sharply over the past two decades.
Moreover, sea levels continue to rise. The rise in mean global sea level over the past decade (2013-2022) is more than twice as high as the sea level rise in the first decade of satellite data (1993-2002).
Poland is losing too much ice
Between 2011 and 2020, Greenland lost about 251 gigatons (billion tons) of ice annually. In Antarctica, an average of 143 gigatons of continental ice melted annually; the loss in the Antarctic was 75 percent higher than the melt rate between 2001 and 2010.
As a result, sea level rise has accelerated to 4.5 millimeters per year over the past decade. Between 2001 and 2010 this was only 2.9 millimeters per year.
WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas warns:
Therefore, reducing CO₂ and other greenhouse gases must be a top priority, he demanded.
Extreme weather events are increasing
Taalas also pointed out that extreme weather events are increasing due to climate change. According to the WMO, disasters such as droughts, heat waves, floods, tropical cyclones and forest fires have caused setbacks in the fight against hunger and poverty over the past decade.
The deadliest wildfire of 2023 occurred in Hawaii, where at least 99 people were killed – making it the deadliest wildfire in the US in more than 100 years.
This year saw not only the longest tropical cyclone (Freddy), but also the strongest cyclone (Mokka) ever observed in the Bay of Bengal.
Greenhouse gas emissions at record levels
Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are the three most important greenhouse gases. Concentrations of these three gases reached record levels last year (the last year for which global totals are available).
“Real-time data from selected locations show that levels of the three greenhouse gases continued to rise in 2023,” the WMO wrote in its report.
There is also positive news
However, UN meteorologists have also observed positive trends: improved early warning systems have reduced the number of deaths from disasters.
And the ozone hole over Antarctica has shrunk thanks to restrictions on harmful chemicals.
Abandoning fossil energy as a solution
A debate is raging in Dubai about whether the use of fossil fuels can be avoided. A new draft text for the planned final document to be distributed on Tuesday initially only mentions different options. One is not to mention the subject at all.
The most far-reaching variant calls for an “orderly and fair exit from fossil fuels”. A third variant calls for “accelerating efforts to phase out fossil fuels unless there are facilities to capture emissions, and rapidly reducing their use to achieve carbon neutrality in the energy system by or around mid-century reach”.
The future use of fossil fuels is one of the main points of contention at the COP. Oil and gas exporting countries such as Saudi Arabia in particular are resisting calls for an exit, but so are a number of other countries that still use fossil energy on a large scale. Conversely, more than a hundred other states are calling for the exit perspective to be anchored in the final document of the climate conference. Switzerland calls for decisions in Dubai to phase out oil and gas by 2050 and coal by 2040.
(cmu with material from sda/dpa)
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I am Amelia James, a passionate journalist with a deep-rooted interest in current affairs. I have more than five years of experience in the media industry, working both as an author and editor for 24 Instant News. My main focus lies in international news, particularly regional conflicts and political issues around the world.
