‘Planet Earth On The Brink’: 2014-2023 Warmest Decade On Record, Says UN Report

New Delhi: Global warming is indeed pushing our planet to the brink.

If any further proof of the impending catastrophe was needed, it came in the form of global heat records being “smashed” last year, reported AFP.

The United Nations (UN) World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) annual State of the Climate report confirmed preliminary data indicating that 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded.

It rounded out the “the warmest 10-year period on record”, stated the WMO report.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said that the report emphasised “a planet on the brink.”

Guterres observed that “earth is issuing a distress call,” adding that “fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts.”

The UN Secretary-General warned that “changes are speeding up.”

According to WMO, the average near-surface temperature was 1.45 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels last year – precariously close to the critical 1.5-degree threshold all nations had agreed to avoid in the 2015 Paris climate accords.

“Never have we been so close… to the 1.5C lower limit of the Paris Agreement,” WMO chief Andrea Celeste Saulo stated.

She warned that the State of the Climate report should be seen as a “red alert” to the world.

“Records were once again broken, and in some cases smashed… the numbers gave ominous new significance to the phrase ‘off the charts’,” WMO observed.

Saulo stressed that climate change was not just about temperatures, but much more.

“What we witnessed in 2023, especially with the unprecedented ocean warmth, glacier retreat and Antarctic sea ice loss, is cause for particular concern,” she said, pointing out that one especially worrying finding was that marine heatwaves gripped nearly a third of the global ocean on an average day last year. And by the end of 2023, more than 90 per cent of the ocean had experienced heatwave conditions at some point during the year, the WMO said.

Continued ocean warming along with rapidly melting glaciers and ice sheets also pushed the sea level in 2023 to its highest point since satellite records began in 1993, WMO said.

WMO stressed that the global mean sea level rise over the past decade (2014-2023) was more than double the rate in the first decade of satellite records.

Dramatic climate shifts are taking a heavy toll on people worldwide, fuelling extreme weather events, flooding and drought.

“The climate crisis is THE defining challenge that humanity faces and is closely intertwined with the inequality crisis,” Saulo said.

Guterres, however, struck a positive note amidst the gloom.

He insisted that the world still has a chance to keep the planet’s long-term temperature rise below the 1.5C threshold and avoid the worst of climate chaos.

“We know how to do it,” the UN chief said.