State of the Climate 2024 Report

About State of the Climate 2024 Report:

• It was released by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) during the United National Climate Conference (COP29) in Baku.
• Highlights:
  • The year 2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record after an extended streak of exceptionally high monthly global mean temperatures.
• From January to September of this year, the global average temperature was 1.54 degrees above the pre-industrial level, with climate warming boosted by the El Niño weather pattern. 
  • It said 2015-2024 would be the warmest ten years on record, adding that ocean warming rates show a particularly strong increase in the past two decades and the planet’s seas will continue to heat up irreversibly.
  • 2023 already showed the highest observed levels of greenhouse gas emissions on record, and real-time data indicates they continued to rise in 2024. 
  • The volume of heat-trapping carbon dioxide increased by 51% between 1750 and 2023.
  • This is clearly visible in the world’s oceans, which absorb about 90% of the excess heat from global warming. They reached record heat in 2023 already, and preliminary data for 2024 shows a continuation of that trend.
  • Simultaneously, glaciers around the world are losing ice at an accelerating rate.In 2023 alone, glaciers receded more quickly than at any other point since records began 70 years ago—losing the equivalent of five times the volume of water held in the Dead Sea.
• The loss is attributed to extreme melting in North America and Europe. 
  • Rapid glacial melt contributes to rising sea levels. From 2014-2023, global mean sea level rose at a rate of 4.77 mm per year, more than double the rate between 1993 and 2002.

Q1: What is the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO)?

It is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN). It is the UN system’s authoritative voice on the state and behavior of the Earth’s atmosphere, its interaction with the oceans, the climate it produces, and the resulting distribution of water resources. It originated from the International Meteorological Organization (IMO), which was founded in 1873. Established in 1950, WMO became the specialized agency of the UN for meteorology (weather and climate), operational hydrology and related geophysical sciences.

News: State of the Climate 2024 Update for COP29

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