UN agency: Year 2023, hottest on record

2023-11-30 21:37:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Fire destroys an area near the Transpantaneira road in Pantanal, Brazil's Mato Grosso state, November 15, 2023.

The UN weather agency announced on Thursday that 2023 is the hottest year on record while warning that there are worrying signs that suggest an increase in floods, fires, melting glaciers and heat waves in the future.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) also warned that the average temperature for this year has increased by about 1.4 degrees Celsius compared to the times before the industrial revolution. The recorded increase in temperatures for this year is only one-tenth of the limit set for the end of the century by the Paris Conference on the environment, held in 2015.

The UN Secretary-General says that the onset of El Nino earlier this year, the weather phenomenon that is influenced by the warming of the Pacific Ocean, could push the average temperature next year above the target limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius. this limit also defined in Paris.

"It is certain that during the next four years we will achieve this increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, at least on a temporary basis", says Petter Taalas, Secretary General of the OBM during an interview.

"In the next decade we will be at that level on a permanent basis."

UN agency: Year 2023, hottest on record

The IOM released the findings marking the start of the UN's Annual Climate Conference on Thursday.

This year's conference is held in Dubai, the oil-rich city of the United Arab Emirates.

The UN agency says that the benchmark for the main objective of the Paris agreement will be whether the increase of 1.5 degrees is maintained over a period of 30 years, not for a single year. Others say the world needs more clarity on this.

"Clearly clarifying what constitutes a breach of the Paris Agreement figures will be crucial ," says Richard Betts of the Met Office in Britain, lead author of a new paper on the issue with the University of Exeter, published in the magazine 'Nature'.

"Without an agreement that would definitively clarify what would count as exceeding a rise in temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius, we risk being distracted and confused at the very time when it is most urgent to take action to avoid the worst consequences." evils of climate change", he added.

Mr. Taalas from OBM says that whatever the case may be, the world is definitely heading towards exceeding this figure.

UN agency: Year 2023, hottest on record

"We're heading for 2.5 to 3 degrees of warming and that means we're going to see huge negative impacts of climate change," Mr Taalas says, pointing to the loss of glaciers and sea level rise across "thousands of next years".

The period between 2015 and 2023 was the warmest on record, says the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Calculations up to October were included in the report's findings, but the report says the last two months are unlikely to be enough time to change the outcome and that 2023 will undoubtedly be a historically hot year.

However, there are "some signs of hope" including greater uptake of renewable energy and electric cars, which help reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere by trapping heat from within, says Mr Taalas.

He says his message to participants at the UN climate conference, known as COP28, is as follows:

"We need to further reduce the use of coal, oil and natural gas to be able to limit warming within the limits set by the Paris Conference," he says./ VOA