After a 2024 of record temperatures as a consequence of climate change, the UN calls for a “drastic” reduction in emissions in 2025 and to act with greater responsibility. In a message for the new year, those responsible for the United Nations remember that the outgoing year has been the warmest ever recorded and they urge the world to turn back and get off the “road to ruin.”
«Greenhouse gas emissions have risen to new all-time highs, meaning more heat for the future, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)”, warns the UN.
“Climate change is manifesting itself before our eyes almost daily in the form of an increase in extreme weather events and their impact,” said the Secretary-General of the WMO, Celeste Saulo. “This year we have witnessed unprecedented rainfall and flooding and terrible loss of life in many countries,” he added.
“Tropical cyclones took a terrible human and economic toll,” he says. Sauland cites as an example the small French archipelago of Mayottein the Indian Ocean, which was devastated this month by Cyclone Chido, reports Ep.
It also points out that “intense heat waves hit dozens of countries” in 2024, with temperatures that exceeded 50 degrees centigradewithout forgetting “the forest fires that caused numerous havoc.” The 2015 Paris climate agreement aimed to contain warming to below 2°C and continue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
In November, the WMO indicated that from January to September 2024, the average air temperature on the surface of the globe was higher than 1.54 ºC than the pre-industrial average. As a consequence, 2024 could far surpass the record of 2023.
Last year, temperatures were 1.45ºC higher than before the industrial revolutionwhen humanity began burning large amounts of fossil fuels. The WMO will publish in January the final figure for global temperature in 2024, and in March the complete report on the state of the global climate for that same year.
In his New Year message, the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterresmentioned the record temperatures recorded in the last decade. «Today I can officially say that we have just endured a decade of deadly heat. “The 10 hottest years on record occurred in the last 10 years, including 2024,” he said.
«This is the climate collapse in real time. We must get off the path to ruin, we have no time to waste,” he said.
«In 2025, countries must lead the world on a safer path, dramatically reducing emissions and supporting the transition to a renewable future. It is essential, and it is possible,” he added.
#calls #drastic #reduction #emissions #record #temperatures
