The World Meteorological Organization announced that 2023 was the warmest year on record, by a wide margin, with average annual temperatures approaching 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The pre-industrial level is the symbolic level contained in the Paris Agreement on climate change.
The United Nations organization added that July and August were among the hottest months on record.
Professor Celeste Saulo, Secretary-General of the Organization, said in a press statement, “Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity, and it affects all of us, especially the most vulnerable groups,” noting that more must be done as quickly as possible in order to achieve a radical reduction in temperatures and emissions. greenhouse gases and accelerating the transition to renewable energy.
She added that given that the El Niño phenomenon usually has the greatest impact on global temperatures after it reaches its peak, 2024 could be even hotter.
Saulo explained that climate change affects all aspects of sustainable development, and undermines efforts to address poverty, hunger, ill health, displacement and environmental degradation, noting that since the 1980s, every decade has been warmer than the previous decade, and the past nine years have been the hottest on record.
The organization's interim report on the state of the climate in 2023, published last November, showed that records had been broken in all of these indicators, as sea surface temperatures were exceptionally high most days of the year, accompanied by severe and destructive marine heat waves, and the extent of ice was In Antarctica it is the lowest ever.
The organization noted that the extreme heat in 2023 affected health and helped fuel devastating forest fires, and torrential rains, floods, and rapidly escalating tropical cyclones left a chain of destruction, death, and huge economic losses.
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