Climate change and rising sea levels are getting worse, UN weather report warns

The World Meteorological Organization has warned that the planet’s warming weather and sea levels are rising faster than before, as world leaders begin to gather in Egypt for Cop27’s international climate talks.

“The latest State of the Global Climate report is a chronicle of climate chaos,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. “We must respond to the planet’s distress signal with action – ambitious, credible climate action.”

In its annual State of the Climate report, the United Nations meteorological agency said sea level rise over the past decade was twice as high as in the 1990s, and since January 2020, the rate of sea level rise has been even higher.

The World Meteorological Organization says the past eight years have been the warmest on record.

“We have lost the (ice) melt game and the sea level rate,” said WMO chief Petteri Taalas. “There are no positive signs yet.”

The only reason the world hasn’t broken annual temperature records over the past few years is the rare three-year La Niña weather phenomenon, he said.

Data on sea levels and average temperatures are trivial compared to the effects of climate change on people in extreme weather.

The report highlighted summer floods in Pakistan that killed more than 1,700 people and displaced 7.9 million, a severe four-year drought in East Africa that has left more than 18 million hungry, the Yangtze River dries up to its lowest level in August, and record heat-waves Roast people in Europe and China.

Endothermic levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide all reached record high levels, with potent methane increasing at a record rate, the report said.

Greenland’s ice sheet and the world’s glaciers are shrinking dramatically, the report said. When all types of ice are included, Greenland lost ice for the 26th consecutive year.

From 2001 to 2022, the snow cover on glaciers in Switzerland fell by more than a third, the report said.

But 90 percent of the Earth’s heat goes into the oceans, and the upper oceans are warming faster and faster. The rate of warming over the past 15 years has been 67 percent faster than since 1971, the report said.

Ocean heat “will continue to warm in the future — a change that is irreversible on centennial to millennium timescales,” the report said.