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world meteorological organization
Fossil Fuel Industry Propaganda Blamed as Record Heat Scorches Planet
"We need to tackle the root cause and get serious about reducing record levels of greenhouse gas emissions," said the head of the World Meteorological Organization.
Aug 08, 2024
As scientists around the world on Thursday released new data about recent record-smashing heat, one United Nations adviser placed blame for the lack of ambitious climate action on the fossil fuel industry's decadeslong disinformation efforts.
"There is this prevailing narrative—and a lot of it is being pushed by the fossil fuel industry and their enablers—that climate action is too difficult, it's too expensive," Selwin Hart, a special adviser to the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and assistant secretary-general of the Climate Action Team, toldThe Guardian's Fiona Harvey.
"It is absolutely critical that leaders, and all of us, push back and explain to people the value of climate action, but also the consequences of climate inaction," said Hart, former executive director of the Caribbean at the Inter-American Development Bank and Barbados' ambassador to the United States and the Organization of American States.
Investigations by academics, journalists, and lawmakers as well as ongoing legal battles have exposed how Big Oil not only has heated and polluted the planet but also knew about the devastating impacts of fossil fuels decades ago and opted to spread lies so shareholders could make massive profits—which they continue to rake in today.
"Climate appears to be dropping down the list of priorities of leaders," Hart said, pointing to polling that shows people around the world want a rapid transition to clean energy. "But we really need leaders now to deliver maximum ambition. And we need maximum cooperation. Unfortunately, we are not seeing that at the moment."
According to The Guardian:
[Hart] warned that the consequences of inaction were being felt in rich countries as well as poor. In the U.S., many thousands of people are finding it increasingly impossible to insure their homes, as extreme weather worsens. "This is directly due to the climate crisis, and directly due to the use of fossil fuels," he said. "Ordinary people are having to pay the price of a climate crisis while the fossil fuel industry continues to reap excess profits and still receives massive government subsidies."
Yet the world has never been better equipped to tackle climate breakdown, Hart added. "Renewables are the cheapest they've ever been, the pace of the energy transition is accelerating," he said.
Hart's comments came as the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) announced that last month "was the second-warmest July globally in our data record, with an average ERA5 surface air temperature of 16.91ºC," or 62.44ºF.
From June 2023 to June 2024, each month was the hottest on record, according to C3S. Samantha Burgess, the agency's deputy director, noted that now, "the streak of record-breaking months has come to an end, but only by a whisker."
"Globally, July 2024 was almost as warm as July 2023, the hottest month on record," Burgess stressed. "July 2024 saw the two hottest days on record. The overall context hasn't changed, our climate continues to warm. The devastating effects of climate change started well before 2023 and will continue until global greenhouse gas emissions reach net-zero."
The U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said Thursday that the new C3S data "underlines the urgency of the Call to Action on Extreme Heat" issued by Guterres last month, shortly after July 22 became the hottest day ever recorded.
"Widespread, intense, and extended heatwaves have hit every continent in the past year," said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo in a statement. "At least 10 countries have recorded daily temperatures of more than 50ºC in more than one location. This is becoming too hot to handle."
Saulo highlighted that "Death Valley in California registered a record average monthly temperature of 42.5ºC (108.5ºF)—possibly a new record observed for anywhere in the world. Even the remote frozen ice sheets of Antarctica have been feeling the heat."
"The WMO community is committed to responding to the U.N. secretary-general's Call to Action with better heat-health early warnings and action plans," she pledged. "Recent estimates produced by WMO and the World Health Organization indicate that the global scale-up of heat-health warning systems for 57 countries alone has the potential to save an estimated 98,000 lives per year. This is one of the priorities of the Early Warnings for All initiative."
"Climate adaptation alone is not enough," she added. "We need to tackle the root cause and get serious about reducing record levels of greenhouse gas emissions."
C3S wasn't alone in releasing new data on Thursday; the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also shared some key points for the country's climate in July, with the full report set to be released on Tuesday.
NOAA's top takeaways were:
- The average temperature of the contiguous U.S. in July was 75.7ºF, 2.1ºF above average, ranking 11th warmest in the 130-year record.
- The Park Fire is the fourth-largest wildfire in California history as of August 6; beginning on July 24, it burned approximately 401,000 acres and destroyed over 560 structures.
- On July 15, a derecho that spawned 32 tornadoes broke the Chicago-area record for most tornadoes in a day.
- On July 1, Beryl became the earliest Category 5 hurricane and the second Category 5 on record during the month of July in the Atlantic Ocean.
- Alaska had its wettest July on record.
- Four new billion-dollar weather and climate disasters were confirmed in July. The year-to-date total currently stands at 19 disasters.
Other major events in July included California's Thompson Fire, which forced over 13,000 people to evacuate, and Washington, D.C. enduring 101ºF on July 17, tying a record for the longest streak of temperatures above 100ºF. NOAA also found that "for the January-July period, the average contiguous U.S. temperature was 54.5ºF, 3.2ºF above average, ranking second-warmest on record."
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'Bleak Reality': World on Track to Overshoot 1.5°C Target in at Least 1 of Next 5 Years
"We must urgently do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions, or we will pay an increasingly heavy price," the WMO's deputy secretary-general said.
Jun 06, 2024
There is an 80% chance that the burning of fossil fuels will push global temperatures past 1.5°C of warming during one of the next five years, the World Meteorological Organization said on Wednesday.
The WMO Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update [2024-2028] also finds that there is an 86% chance that one of the next five years will surpass 2023 as the hottest year on record.
"Behind these statistics lies the bleak reality that we are way off track to meet the goals set in the Paris agreement," WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said in a statement. "We must urgently do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions, or we will pay an increasingly heavy price in terms of trillions of dollars in economic costs, millions of lives affected by more extreme weather, and extensive damage to the environment and biodiversity."
"WMO is sounding the alarm that we will be exceeding the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency."
In the Paris agreement, world leaders pledged to limit global heating to "well below" 2°C above preindustrial levels and ideally to 1.5°C. When that agreement was adopted in 2015, there was a near-zero chance that one of the subsequent five years would exceed the 1.5°C limit. That chance rose to 20% between 2017 and 2021 and 66% between 2023 and 2027.
WMO predicts that global mean near-surface temperatures over the next five years will average between 1.1°C and 1.9°C above 1850-1900 levels. There is a 47% chance that the temperature average for the entire period will surpass 1.5°C, according to the report, which was prepared by the U.K.'s Met Office.
"If you do NOT hear or read this climate information repeatedly at the top of your media today, there is something very wrong with your media," journalist and activist Wendy Bacon wrote on social media in response to the report. "Opening new fossil fuels in this situation is a crime with massive likely consequences."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that limiting warming to 1.5°C rather than 2°C could stave off some of the more extreme impacts of the climate emergency, protecting hundreds of millions of people from climate risk and poverty by 2050 and preventing nearly four inches of sea-level rise. However, scientists point out that no degree of warming is harmless and every degree avoided makes an important difference.
Global temperatures first temporarily pushed past 1.5°C in December 2015, and again during the winter and spring of 2016 and 2020, according to the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service.
In June 2023, they shot above the target again. Overall, last year's temperatures averaged 1.45°C above pre-industrial levels, but the period from January 2023 to 2024 marked the first time that the global average surpassed 1.5°C for 12 months in a row.
May 2024 was also the 12th consecutive warmest month of its kind on record, capping what is now the hottest 12-month stretch on record, during which temperatures averaged 1.63°C above preindustrial levels. That 12-month stretch brought record-breaking wildfires in Canada, deadly flooding from Libya to Brazil to Afghanistan, and global coral bleaching.
"WMO is sounding the alarm that we will be exceeding the 1.5°C level on a temporary basis with increasing frequency," Barrett said. "We have already temporarily surpassed this level for individual months—and indeed as averaged over the most recent 12-month period."
"However," Barrett continued, "it is important to stress that temporary breaches do not mean that the 1.5°C goal is permanently lost because this refers to long-term warming over decades."
The record-shattering heat in 2023 was partly fueled by an El Niño event. While the Earth is now entering the cooler La Niña phase, human activity such as the burning of oil, gas, and coal and the clearing of forests could still spike temperatures over the next half decade.
"We are living in unprecedented times, but we also have unprecedented skill in monitoring the climate and this can help inform our actions," Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus Climate Change Service, said in response to the WMO report. "This string of hottest months will be remembered as comparatively cold, but if we manage to stabilize the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in the very near future we might be able to return to these 'cold' temperatures by the end of the century."
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WMO Climate Report Details 'Deafening Cacophony of Broken Records'
"Governments at the COP28 climate talks must take real action for a full, fair, funded, and fast phaseout of fossil fuels," one advocate said in response to the news.
Nov 30, 2023
It is "virtually certain" that 2023 will be the warmest year on record, the World Meteorological Organization concluded in its provisional State of the Global Climate report for the year.
That was only one of the broken records detailed in the report, which was released Thursday to coincide with the start of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in the United Arab Emirates. The WMO documented a year of "extreme weather and climate events" that "had major impacts on all inhabited continents."
"Record heat. Deadly floods. Toxic air. It has never been clearer that the world must stop burning fossil fuels if we want a safe, livable planet," Oil Change International global policy manager Romain Ioualelen said in response to the findings. "And yet, the fossil fuel industry is pumping more and more gas and oil, expanding its business, lying to us, and raking in deadly profits, as millions of people are displaced, harmed, and killed. Governments at the COP28 climate talks must take real action for a full, fair, funded, and fast phaseout of fossil fuels."
As of October, 2023 was set to be the warmest year in 174 years of record-keeping, WMO confirmed. The body's findings come as scientists have previously said it will likely be the hottest year in 125,000 years as well. Mean near-surface temperatures during the first 10 months of the year were around 1.4°C above the average from 1850 to 1900, WMO found. Because 2016 and 2020, the two previous hottest years on record, came in at 1.29°C and 1.27°C above that average, it is unlikely that the last two months of 2023 would be cold enough to offset its lead.
Hottest year wasn't the only record broken in 2023. The year also saw the hottest monthly ocean temperatures on record from April through September, and the hottest land temperatures from July to October. Because July is typically the hottest month of the year, this July was the hottest month ever recorded.
Sea level rise reached a record height, and the rate of increase from 2013 to 2022 was more than double the rate from 1993 to 2002. Antarctic sea-ice extent also shrank to its lowest level on record in February and struggled to recover, measuring its lowest maximum extent on record in September.
"We urge governments to be ready now at the U.N. climate talks to take action commensurate with what the science is telling us."
Some markers for which 2023 data is not yet available broke records in 2022. This included atmospheric levels of the three main greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—and ocean heat content.
"It's a deafening cacophony of broken records," WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. "These are more than just statistics. We risk losing the race to save our glaciers and to rein in sea level rise."
The report also detailed how a warming climate is having a direct and devastating impact on human communities. Climate-fueled weather disasters this year included Storm Daniel, which brought severe flooding to much of the Mediterranean, with especially deadly consequences for Libya; a record wildfire season in Canada that shrouded major North American cities in toxic smoke; heat waves, which reached especially severe heights Southern Europe and North Africa; and flooding in the Horn of Africa following five years of drought that made the soil less able to absorb the rainfall. Many of these events forced people to flee their homes and made it harder for them to secure food.
"This year we have seen communities around the world pounded by fires, floods, and searing temperatures. Record global heat should send shivers down the spines of world leaders," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in response to the report.
Guterres and other climate advocates used the report to push world leaders to deliver ambitious climate action at COP28, which is mired in controversy following revelations that its president Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who is also the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, used the talks to push oil and gas deals.
"We have the roadmap to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 °C and avoid the worst of climate chaos. But we need leaders to fire the starting gun at COP28 on a race to keep the 1.5 degree limit alive," Guterres said.
He called for a commitment to phase out fossil fuels, triple renewable energy, double energy efficiency, set clear guidelines for the next round of pledges, and provide countries with the financial support they need to make them happen.
Ioualelen said that the delegates should pay attention to experts instead of fossil fuel companies.
"Rather than prioritizing lobbyists and corporations, we need leaders to make real change that tackles the root cause of the climate crisis, fossil fuels, and makes a better world for all of us—today and for generations to come," Ioualelen said. "We urge governments to be ready now at the U.N. climate talks to take action commensurate with what the science is telling us."
Taalas also called for action to avoid worsening extremes.
"We cannot return to the climate of the 20th century, but we must act now to limit the risks of an increasingly inhospitable climate in this and the coming centuries," he said.
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