(GoRealNewsNow.com)—In what some will find alarming and others uncredible, the United Nations has released a dire proclamation claiming that global temperatures in the previous year shattered all previous heat records, as heatwaves saturated the seas and glaciers experienced unprecedented ice melt.
This update came with a forewarning that 2024 is anticipated to usher in even more extreme heat while the UN’s weather and climate entity’s yearly report on the climate state validated early findings that 2023 was unprecedentedly hot which marked it as the apex of the hottest decade ever recorded.
Omar Baddour, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) chief of climate monitoring voiced an ominous forecast to journalists: “There is a high probability that 2024 will again break the record of 2023.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres responded to the findings and declared our planet is teetering on the edge. “Earth’s issuing a distress call,” he remarked in a video and highlighted the havoc wrought by fossil fuel emissions on the climate and the accelerating pace of these changes.
According to the WMO, the past year’s average near-surface temperature hovered 1.45 degrees Celsius above the era preceding industrialization which inched dangerously close to the critical 1.5-degree limit set by global leaders in the 2015 Paris climate agreement to avert catastrophic warming.
Moreover, Secretary General of the WMO Celeste Saulo announced to the press and noted that “2023 set new records for every single climate indicator.” The report used strong language to describe the severity of these new records, which suggested that the term ‘off the charts’ has taken on a chilling new relevance.
Likewise, Saulo pointed out the particular alarm caused by last year’s unparalleled ocean warming, glacier retreat and the shrinkage of Antarctic Sea ice.
An alarming statistic from the report indicated that marine heatwaves ensnared nearly a third of the world’s oceans on an average day in 2023. Furthermore, over 90 % of the oceanic expanse had experienced such conditions at some point throughout the year.
The report warned of severe consequences for marine ecosystems and coral reefs due to the uptick in the frequency and intensity of marine heat waves. In addition, the WMO noted that in Switzerland alone, Alpine glaciers had diminished by 10 % of their volume in just the past two years.
“The climate crisis is THE defining challenge that humanity faces and is closely intertwined with the inequality crisis,” Saulo remarked.
Copyright 2024, GoRealNewsNow.com