It is official: we have exceeded 1.1 ° C of the warming threshold. There is no time, the time to act is now.
Now is not the best time for the world plagued by diseases and pests, to have crossed the warming threshold of 1.1 degrees Celsius.
However, the annual report on the State of the Climate of the World Meteorological Organization ( WMO ) has revealed that during 2019 the global average temperature of the planet reached 1.1 ° C or 1.98 ° F above pre-industrial levels.
This shows that meeting the targets of 1.5 ° C or 2 ° C of the Paris Climate Agreement is a fairly remote possibility.
Global warning
This time, the report is more severe in its call for action by governments to take seriously, once and for all, the climate crisis .
According to the report, meteorological and climatic phenomena have had a negative impact on the economy, health, the increase of displaced persons and refugees, food security and ecosystems on land and sea in recent years.
The report highlights that between 2015 and 2019 the hottest season on record was lived and from 2010 to 2019 it was the hottest decade in the existing records. The trend comes from 1980, and each new decade has evidenced a greater increase in temperature.
We just had the warmest January on record. Winter was unusually mild in many parts of the northern hemisphere. Smoke and harmful fire pollutants in Australia circumnavigated the world, causing an increase in CO 2 emissions. The record temperatures reported in Antarctica were accompanied by large-scale ice melt and fracture of a glacier, which will have repercussions on sea level rise. As greenhouse gas levels continue to rise, warming will continue. A recent decade-long forecast indicates that a new annual global temperature record is likely to occur in the next five years. It's a matter of time".
CO 2 records
The information obtained over the years shows that greenhouse gases have broken records year after year, and data obtained in 2019 have suggested that it has possibly continued to increase last year.
Although during the last decade the ocean has halted the impact of climate change , absorbing 23% of CO 2 emissions, the results are not encouraging: 84% of the ocean has experienced a sea heat wave .
Antonio Guterres , Secretary-General of the United Nations, wrote in the report:
We are currently a long way from meeting the 1.5 ° C or 2 ° C targets required by the Paris Agreement. This report describes the latest science and illustrates the urgency of far-reaching climate action. It gathers data from all fields of climate science and lists the possible future impacts of climate change, from the economic and health consequences to decreased food security and increased displacement. ”
The negative effects of climate chaos are nothing new, they have been known for a long time, the report says. In 2018, more than 820 million people worldwide suffered from lack of food related to droughts and famines.
Tragedies caused by extreme weather events have become increasingly frequent: deadly heat waves across the planet, cyclones, floods, forest fires, millions of people had to flee and millions of animals were annihilated.
The report makes an urgent call to try to stop warming , stressing that countries' governments must launch policies to stop greenhouse gas emissions. There is no time, the time to act is now .
The annual climate report of the World Meteorological Organization can be read at the following link .
