Climate change underscores the urgent need to reduce emissions

According to its director, Petri Taalas, this is “unequivocally due to greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities.”

The decade 2011-2020, which witnessed record land and ocean temperatures, saw a continuing increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases that fueled the significant loss of glaciers and rising sea levels, the latest WMO report reaffirms.

The text was published when countries agreed at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), to create a new voluntary fund to pay compensation to vulnerable countries for loss and damage caused by climate change.

According to the agenda of the climate meeting, there will be difficult negotiations in the coming days on targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and phasing out fossil fuels.

The World Meteorological Organization document on the state of the climate, which was presented in Dubai, revealed that between 2011 and 2020, a greater number of countries recorded record high temperatures than in any other decade, and it also warned of a “particularly radical shift” taking place in the polar regions and mountains. The high.

Experts from the UN Environment Agency warned in the text that climate disruption undermines sustainable development, with dire consequences for global food security, displacement and migration.

“Every decade since 1990 has been warmer than the decade before, and we see no immediate signs of this trend abating,” Taalas said, stressing that the race to save melting glaciers and ice sheets is being lost.

The report paints a bleak climate picture, but it also highlights positive developments, such as international efforts under the Montreal Protocol to eliminate ozone-depleting chemicals that reduced the ozone hole in Antarctica during the period 2011-2020.

The World Meteorological Organization confirmed that there is also progress in forecasting, early warning systems and coordinated disaster management, the effectiveness of which reduces the number of victims caused by extreme events, despite the increase in economic losses.

Poem/CRC