The past eight years are on target to be the most popular ever recorded, a United Nations report has found, as UN chief Antonio Guterres warned that the planet was sending “a distress signal”.
The UN’s weather and climate body released its annual state of the worldwide climate report on Sunday with one other warning that the goal to limit temperature increases to 1.5C (2.7F) was “barely nearby”.
The acceleration of warmth waves, glacier melts and torrential rains has led to an increase in natural disasters, the World Meteorological Organization said because the UN’s COP27 climate summit opened within the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
“As COP27 gets under way, our planet is sending a distress signal,” said Guterres, who described the report as “a chronicle of climate chaos”.
Representatives from nearly 200 states gathered in Egypt will discuss learn how to keep the rise in temperatures to 1.5C, as advisable by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a goal some scientists say is now unattainable.
Earth has warmed greater than 1.1C for the reason that late nineteenth century with roughly half of that increase occurring up to now 30 years, the report showed.
This yr is on target to be the fifth or sixth warmest ever recorded despite the impact since 2020 of La Nina, a periodic and naturally occurring phenomenon within the Pacific that cools the atmosphere.
“All of the climatic indications are negative,” World Meteorological Organization head Petteri Taalas told Al Jazeera from Sharm el-Sheikh. “We’ve got broken records in primary greenhouse gas concentrations, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide [levels].”
“I feel the mix of the facts that we’re bringing to the table and the undeniable fact that we’ve got began seeing impacts of climate change worldwide … are wake-up calls, and that’s why we’ve got this climate conference,” he said.
Surface water within the ocean hit record high temperatures in 2021 after warming especially fast in the course of the past 20 years. Surface water is accountable for absorbing greater than 90 percent of gathered heat from human carbon emissions.
Marine heat waves were also on the rise, adversely affecting coral reefs and the half-billion individuals who rely on them for food and their livelihoods.
The report warned that greater than 50 percent of the ocean surface experienced at the very least one marine heatwave in 2022.
Sea level rise has also doubled up to now 30 years as ice sheets and glaciers melted at a quick pace. The phenomenon threatens tens of hundreds of thousands of individuals living in low-lying coastal areas.
“The messages on this report could barely be bleaker,” said Mike Meredith, science leader on the British Antarctic Survey.
In March and April, a heatwave in South Asia was followed by floods in Pakistan, which left a 3rd of the country underwater. At the least 1,700 people died, and eight million were displaced.
In East Africa, rainfall has been below average in 4 consecutive wet seasons, the longest in 40 years, with 2022 set to deepen the drought.
China saw the longest and most intense heatwave on record and the second-driest summer. Similarly in Europe, repeated bouts of high temperatures caused many deaths.
‘Loss and damage’ talks
The UN warning was made as delegates on the summit agreed to carry discussions on compensation by wealthy nations to poorer ones almost certainly to be affected by climate change.
“This creates for the primary time an institutionally stable space on the formal agenda of COP and the Paris Agreement to debate the pressing issue of funding arrangements needed to take care of existing gaps, responding to loss and damage,” COP27 President Sameh Shoukry told the opening session.
Poorer nations least accountable for climate-warming emissions but most vulnerable to its impacts are suffering probably the most and are, due to this fact, asking for what has also been called “climate reparations”.
This item, added to the agenda in Egypt on Sunday, is predicted to cause tension. At COP26 last yr in Glasgow, high-income nations blocked a proposal for a loss and damage financing body and as a substitute supported three years of funding discussions.
The loss and damage discussions now on the agenda at COP27 is not going to involve liability or binding compensation but they’re intended to guide to a conclusive decision “no later than 2024”, Shoukry said.
“The inclusion of this agenda reflects a way of solidarity for the victims of climate disasters,” he said.
