The World Meteorological Organization expects more records to be broken this year due to the El Nino weather pattern
GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) — Every major global climate record was broken last year and 2024 could be worse, the World Meteorological Organization said, with its chief voicing particular concern about ocean heat and shrinking sea ice.
The United Nations weather agency said in its annual State of the Global Climate report that average temperatures hit the highest level in 174 years of record-keeping by a clear margin, reaching 1.45 C above pre-industrial levels.
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It said ocean temperatures also reached the warmest in 65 years of data with more than 90 percent of the seas having experienced heat wave conditions during the year, harming food systems.
“The WMO community is sounding the red alert to the world,” said secretary-general Celeste Saulo.
“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 ocean heat was particularly concerning because it was “almost irreversible,” possibly taking millennia to reverse.
“The trend is really very worrying and that is because of the characteristics of water that keep heat content for longer than the atmosphere,” she said.
Climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels and coupled with the emergence of the natural El Nino climate pattern, pushed the world into record territory in 2023.
WMO’s head of climate monitoring, Omar Baddour, said there was a “high probability” that 2024 would set new heat records, saying that the year after an El Nino was typically warmer still.
The report showed a big plunge in Antarctic sea ice with the peak level measured at one million sq. kilometres below the previous record, an area roughly equivalent to the size of Egypt.
That trend, combined with ocean warming, which causes water to expand, has contributed to a more than doubling of the rate of sea-level rise over the past decade compared with the 1993-2002 period, it said.
Ocean heat was concentrated in the North Atlantic with temperatures an average three degrees Celsius above average in late 2023, the report said. Warmer ocean temperatures affect delicate marine ecosystems, and many fish species have fled north from this area seeking cooler temperatures.
Saulo, a meteorologist from Argentina who has promised to strengthen global warning systems for climate disasters, said she hoped the report would raise awareness of the “vital need to scale up the urgency and ambition of climate action”.
“That’s why we spoke about the red alert because we must care for the people and how they will suffer from these more frequent, more extreme events,” she said.
“If we do nothing, things will become worse and that will be our responsibility.”
