In a report presented on the sidelines of a climate summit in the Egyptian city that began yesterday, the WMO highlighted that extreme heat waves, droughts and floods have affected millions of people and cost billions of dollars this year .
The current global mean temperature is estimated to be about 1.15 degrees above the pre-industrial average of 1850–1900.
Meanwhile, he highlighted that “sea warming reaches record levels in 2021 (assessed last year)”.
The organization said that 2022 was also disastrous due to the melting of glaciers.
He stressed that there had been record massive damage in the European Alps, a situation that also plagued Greenland, where last September it rained instead of snow for the first time.
“The signs and effects of climate change are becoming more dramatic,” the WMO said.
In that sense, he pointed out that the rate of sea level rise has doubled since 1993 and has only risen by about 10 millimeters since January 2020.
WMO Secretary-General Petrie Talas said the higher the heat, the worse the effect.
“It is already too late for many glaciers and hundreds will continue to melt,” he lamented.
Talas said rising sea levels are a threat to humanity, especially to the billions of people living in coastal areas.
Too often, those least responsible for climate change suffer the most, as we have seen with terrible floods in Pakistan and deadly, prolonged droughts in the Horn of Africa.
cf. Rob
