As 2023 draws to a close, it will go down in the annals as the hottest year on record, marked by a series of record-breaking statistics, which according to the United Nations highlight the urgency of taking action against climate change.
«Greenhouse gases, global temperatures and the sea are at record levels. And the Antarctic sea ice has never been so thin", warns the head of the World Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas, while for Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, these record temperatures should "make world leaders break out in a cold sweat".
And new alarms are also being raised by scientists, according to whom the ability to limit warming to a manageable level "is eluding humanity".
The 2015 Paris climate accords aimed to limit global warming to below two degrees Celsius compared to average pre-industrial levels measured between 1850 and 1900 - and to 1.5°C if possible. At the end of October 2023, however, the temperature was already around 1.4°C above the pre-industrial reference level.
The agency will publish its final report on the state of the climate only in a few months, but it is already convinced that 2023 will be at the top of the podium for the warmest year, ahead of 2016 and 2020, based on the thermometer from January to October.
“It is very unlikely that the last two months will influence the ranking,” it is explained.
The last nine years since 2015 have been the warmest since modern measurements began. In this way, Taalas continues, «we risk losing the race to save our glaciers and slow down the rise in sea levels. We can no longer return to the climate of the 20th century, but we must act now to limit the risks of an increasingly inhospitable climate in this century and in the centuries to come."
(Unioneonline/lf)