The report, led by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), warns that the world is “going in the wrong direction” on climate change. With greenhouse gas concentrations continuing to rise in the atmosphere and world leaders failing to adopt strategies to hold global warming below 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures, Earth is inching closer to dangerous climate tipping points , reports the “United in Science” report. Already, extreme weather events are more frequent and more intense. “Heat waves in Europe. Colossal floods in Pakistan… there is nothing natural about the new scale of these disasters,” Guterres said in a video.
The last 7 years have been the warmest on record
Despite a reduction in emissions during the coronavirus lockdown, global warming emissions have soared beyond pre-pandemic levels. Preliminary data reveal that global carbon dioxide emissions in the first half of this year were 1.2 percent higher than in the same period in 2019, the report found. The past seven years have been the warmest on record. The global average temperature has already risen by 1.1 C above the pre-industrial average. And scientists expect the annual average could be anywhere between 1.1C and 1.7C warmer by 2026, meaning there’s a chance we’ll pass the 1.5C warming limit in the next five years. By the end of the century, without aggressive climate action, global warming is estimated to reach 2.8C.
Climate tipping points are coming
But even at the current level of warming we could be past several climate tipping points. The ocean current that carries heat from the tropics to the northern hemisphere, for example, is now at its slowest in 1,000 years — putting historic weather patterns at risk, says the report, which includes contributions from the UN Environment Program and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. Pakistani naval personnel rescue people from their flood-damaged homes after heavy monsoon rains in Dadu district of Sindh province on September 7. Record monsoon rains have caused devastating floods across Pakistan since June, killing more than 1,200 people and leaving nearly a third of the country under water, affecting the lives of 33 million. (Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images) Almost half of the world’s population is considered particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change – floods, heat, drought, fires and storms. By the 2050s, over 1.6 billion city dwellers will regularly retreat to three-month average temperatures of at least 35C. To help communities cope, the WMO has pledged to put every person on Earth under the protection of an early warning system within the next five years.
