Climate change woes are bad, getting worse: UN weather report

Earth’s warming weather and rising seas are getting worse and doing so faster than before, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned Sunday in a somber note as world leaders started gathering for international climate negotiations.

“The latest State of the Global Climate report is a chronicle of climate chaos,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “We must answer the planet’s distress signal with action—ambitious, credible climate action.” In its annual state of the climate report, the United Nations’ weather agency said that sea level rise in the past decade was double what it was in the 1990s and since January 2020 has jumped at a higher rate than that. Since the decade began, seas are rising at 5 millimeters a year (.2 inches) compared to 2.1 millimeters (.08 inches) in the 1990s.

Last 8 years warmest on record

The global mean temperature in 2022 is estimated to be 1.15 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) average, likely making the eight years from 2015 the warmest on record, the WMO said.

The report titled 'WMO Provisional State of the Global Climate 2022’ released at the 27th Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC on Sunday stated that the rate of sea level rise has doubled since 1993 and has risen by nearly 10 mm since January 2020 to a new record high this year.

The past two-and-a-half years’ account for 10 per cent of the overall rise in sea level since satellite measurements started nearly 30 years ago, the report stated.