The World Meteorological Organisation is releasing today the State of the Global Climate 2023 report.
It confirms that 2023 was the warmest year on record and that many other records were broken last year.
Today we have with us the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organisation, Mrs Celeste Salo.
She will be presenting the context and the the findings, specifically the context of this report.
And we have Mr Omar Badou, who is the Chief of Climate monitoring at WMO, and he will present the technical findings of the reports.
We have also our technical expert, John Kennedy, the coordinator of the report, who is joining online on Zoom.
But to begin with, I'm honoured to give the floor to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to set the stage for this press conference.
Earth is issuing A distress call.
The latest State of the Global Climate report shows a planet on the brink.
Fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts.
Sirens are blaring across all major indicators last year.
So record heat, record sea levels and record ocean surface temperatures.
Glaciers likely lost more ice than ever before.
Some records are just chart topping.
They are chart busting and changes are speeding up.
Sea level rises are accelerating, threatening coastal communities.
And last September, Antarctic sea highs was 1,000,000 square kilometres smaller than the previous record low for the time of year.
That's an area almost 25 times the size of Switzerland.
The impact of all these is stark, brutal and accelerating with a deadly force.
The report from the World Meteorological Organisation details extreme weather around the world in 2023 and the trail of destruction left in its wake.
Thousands killed, millions displaced, crops failing and vast economic losses.
The impact on sustainable development is devastating.
Every fraction of a degree of global heating impacts the future of life on Earth.
This report shows that in 2023 we came perilously close to the global temperature temporarily rising 1.5°C above pre industrial levels.
The good news is that we can still keep our planet's long term temperature rise below that limit and avoid the worst of climate chaos.
And we know how to do it by matching the speed of climate change with radical climate action that aligns with sustainable development by accelerating the inevitable end of the fossil fuel age.
With AG20 leading a just global energy transition by countries producing national climate plans by 2025 that covered the whole economy and the line with 1.5° limit.
By delivering finance for climate action in developing countries, including to adapt to extreme weather, by protecting every person on hers with an early warning system by 2027, and by putting meaningful resources in the new loss and damage fund.
There's still time to throw out a lifeline to people and planet, but leaders must step up and act now.
Professor Celeste Salo, can you tell us a few words about the context in which this report was written?
And I think that the the words by the UN Secretary General are loud and clear.
So let me just start mention that I'm pleased to address you journalists today on the release of the flagship report of the World Meteorological Organisation on the state of the global climate.
The year 2023 set new records for every single climate indicator.
This annual report shows that the climate crisis is the defining challenge that humanity faces.
It is closely intertwined with inequality crisis as witnessed by growing food insecurity, population displacement and biodiversity loss.
It is an existential ****** to vulnerable populations everywhere and particularly in the Allen States.
Extreme weather, heat waves, floods, routes, wildfires and intense tropical cyclones undermine all the Sustainable Development Goals.
They cost many billions of dollars in economic losses each year.
The cost of climate action may seem ****, but the cost of climate in action is much higher.
The World Meteorological Organisation has issued annual State of the climate reports for more than 30 years.
In that time, average carbon dioxide concentrations have risen by 11%.
The global temperature has soared and is getting closer to the 1.5°C lower limit of the Paris Agreement.
Glaciers loss was the largest on record last year.
These are the water towers of the world.
They are our freshwater reservoirs.
Sea ice depletion in the Antarctica was one of the major climate facts recorded in 2023.
The scientific knowledge about climate change has existed for more than 5 decades and yet we missed an entire generation of opportunity.
It is imperative that our actions today are based on the welfare of future generations rather than short term economic interests.
As Secretary General of of the World Meteorological Organisation, I am now sounding the red alert about the state of the climate.
There is, however, a glimmer of hope.
Renewable energy generation is surging.
In 2023, clean energy capacity additions increased by almost 50% / 2022.
Weather and climate services will be vital to power the transition to solar, wind and hydropower.
Early warnings against hazards like tropical cyclones saved countless lives last year.
The Early Warnings for All initiative is being rolled out with an initial focus on 30 priority countries.
Less than half of all countries have proper early warning services.
This means people are on their own and unprotected.
Early warnings work, but they must work for everyone.
WMO is also joining with partners and multilateral development banks to increase and streamline flows of climate financing for mitigation and adaptation.
Funding is on the increase but needs to be accelerated.
The WMO community provides the science to inform climate action.
That is why one of our priorities is a new Global Greenhouse Gas Watch initiative.
However, climate action is Hanford by a lack of capacity.
We need to increase support for national meteorological and hydrological services so they can provide Information Services to meet society's needs.
Our services save lives and livelihoods.
In closing, I would like to thank the dozens of experts and partners who contributed to this report.
They include UN organisations, national meteorological and hydrological services and regional climate services.
Thank you very much, Mrs Secretary General.
Now I I have the pleasure to give the floor to Omar Baidu.
He's the head of climate Monitoring at WMO.
Omar, thank you very much and we can show the slides.
Let me first give some quick characteristics of this report.
This report is the 30th edition of such reports since we started producing this in 1993.
In this year edition report we had 77 countries contributing to the report from the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services.
We had 50 experts around the world contributing to the report in various aspect of the physical part of this report.
And also we have very good collaboration with the United Nations agencies, especially on impacts and socio economic impacts.
Let me now start working you through the key indicators.
We have heard key messages from UN Secretary General and Professor Salo.
Let me give you some technical details to explain those key messages.
So the key indicators that usually we track is the global temperatures.
It drives many other impact on the air system.
So this year 2023 recorded the hottest year on record with 1.45°C above the pre industrial level which were computed using the 98050 to 1900 reference.
The last five years, sorry, the last nine years since 2015 to 2023 are the warmest year on record.
The decade 2014 to 2023 is the warmest decade on record.
This demonstrates the acceleration and the continuing of the warming.
As the global climate warms, the ocean also warms and also we have the melting of glaciers and ice sheets.
All this contribute to the sea level rise.
The 2023 recorded the highest sea level rise ever.
But most importantly to mention today is acceleration of sea level rise.
If in the earlier decade since the measurement of sea level, we had about 2.13 millimetre per year, the recent decade recorded 4.17 millimetre per year, so about the double of the sea level rise.
This is why we are talking about sea level rate acceleration.
The next key indicator of the evidence of climate change is the sea ice.
As the temperature of the ocean warms and the air, the sea ice on pole on both poles in the North Arctic Ocean as well as the southern pole undergo depletion.
So the as you can see on the top figure, the sea ice extent for the Arctic continued to it's decline.
It was not the record decline this year, but the long term trend is still down.
The Antarctic sea ice is more stringly highlighted here today.
As Professor Saoro mentioned, it was a record low extent in the Antarctic for the for consecutive years now we have noticed the depletion of the Antarctic sea ice.
Up to 2015 we didn't see that kind of phenomena, but since 2016 we we started recording the depletion of the Antarctic sea ice.
We don't have yet full scientific information why this happened suddenly, but investigation is worth continuing to understand exactly what happened.
OK, now we are talking about climate change which is a global, but the what we feel at regional and national level is extreme event which are ever driven by natural variability or and by the effect of climate change.
So the most important extreme event that we refer to generally in our report are those related to heat or those related to extreme precipitation because those which affluence the human lives and also the socio economic impacts.
So in the in the map that you have on the screen shows where we recorded extreme heat during the summer in 2023.
Most importantly that you can see is the Northern hemisphere was vastly affected by extreme heat.
We remember the summer was very hot in Europe and in many other places like in North America that led to excess of mortality.
We have some numbers, but we are still gathering statistics.
We had forest fires, unprecedented burned forest in Canada recorded in 2023.
We had also several other extreme events like Japan, like Australia.
When we talk about extreme precipitation, we talk about of associated impact on agriculture, food security, but also flooding which cause displacement, mortality etcetera, etcetera.
This map shows where we had extreme precipitation or extreme deficit of precipitation.
So the brown colour shows where we had droughts and green colour where we had excess of precipitation.
It's not worthy to say, for example, that most of Southern America, Central America and also North America experienced a very strong dry, dry episode during 2023.
In addition to that, also North Africa, I experienced long drought deposit.
I am from Morocco and I can explain to you that some of dams have depleted almost to 0% of their capacity, which brought a lot of issues in domestic water and use of that water and so forth.
We had also floods in different part of the world, especially in China and and in New Zealand which had the the worst flooding in in history.
As mentioned by Professor Solow, all this extreme event have huge impact especially in developing and in these developed countries because they are very vulnerable to start extreme event.
One of the most impact that is affecting developing these developed countries is agriculture and food security because their economy is vastly influenced by agriculture.
So as you can see in that graph, which we think here, if you're for producing this analysis, the food security was improving since the measurement of this of this information.
But until recently, in the last five years, since 2019, we keep recording a worsening of food security in development in these development countries.
So this is not exactly linked to climate change or to climate variability.
But what we can say is that climate change and climate variability, especially extremely exacerbate the existing vulnerability in these countries due to conflict due to many other things.
And also the displacement of population has been largely reported.
Millions of people have been displaced because of floods and extreme precipitation.
I think I stop here if you have any question and then we can answer them.
Thank you, Mr Badoo, and now I'm happy to open the floor to questions, first in the room and then questions online.
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I'm Antonio Roto from Spanish news agent CFA.
I would like to ask if you think there is a change of the assessment that WM WMO said last year saying that 2024 will probably be even hotter than than last year, given that, for example, El Nino is going to end in the middle of this year and there is being very low temperatures in in winter in Northern Hemisphere.
So do you still think this year is going to be even worse than last one?
Secretary General, please go ahead.
No, maybe it's just a comment with respect to linear, as you have mentioned quite well, linear is weakening, but still we have a linear on board.
So the the record's up to now and and the upcoming three months, we expect temperatures above normal, mostly covering mostly most of the parts of the world.
But we cannot be completely certain about what will happen at the end of 2024.
You know, it's, it's too, too, too premature.
But I would love to to hear our expert, Omar.
Thank you, Professor Saru.
In fact, there is always uncertainties about predicting what will happen in the upcoming year.
Traditionally if you look back in the statistics, the following year of El Nino is warms here.
So this year we had very warm 2023 which precedes what could be the record here.
So This is why we have certain uncertainties about what exactly caused the that very big jump in 2023 global temperature.
In addition, of course, to the climate change scientists are looking at other factors in addition to El Nino.
So we, we, we cannot say definitely that 2024 is going to be the warmth here.
But what I would say there is a **** probability that 2024 will again bring the record of 2023.
No other question in the room then.
Laurent Ciro, Swiss News agency.
Thank you for taking my question.
As Secretary General, you're, you're the first SG from the South and and above from late in America.
When you look at the temperature currently in Rio de Janeiro, where it's felt at more than 62°, are we witnessing the beginning of a period where it might be more difficult for people to live in big cities which are very low altitude and maybe above all in your region?
Thank you very much for that question.
Yes, I'm, I'm really concerned about what I heard in Rio de Janeiro still we need to really make sure and using all our quality controls to to really confirm that, that value.
But still the message I think it's clear then we are having temperatures that are well above what we used to have and our populations they are not prepared to cope with that.
They are infrastructure is not prepared, their homes are not prepared.
So that's why we spoke about the red alert because we must care for the people and how they will suffer of these more frequent and more extreme events.
And as you mentioned, the global S because it's more vulnerable because of the lack of infrastructure, lack of investments and so on is where we should put more emphasis and focus and move all the resources we have to help them adapt and mitigate the the risks of these extreme events.
A question in the room again, please.
I'm sorry, Miss Solo, considering the critical role played by China in global climate action, what are WM OS expectations of China's efforts in combating the climate change?
Well, certainly the, the efforts of any country and particularly the the efforts from China are mostly needed.
And, and we all know that you are committed not only to, to work at the country level, but to support the region to better adapt to what we have just seen what is happening.
So I would expect the continued collaboration from China, not only in terms of moving forward, science that is needed, better practises that are needed, but also sharing these practises and good science with the world.
So that is the continued collaboration is for us a key factor that we will support always.
We have another question in the room, I think.
Please go ahead, Secretary General.
Hi, I'm Jamie from Associated Press.
I you mentioned the sort of balance between economics and environment and that countries are putting short term interests ahead of longer term concerns.
How do you get that message through?
I mean, you're making this, but what are you doing aside from this press conference and issuing this report?
What are you doing both publicly with your visits with the leaders, but also behind the scenes, whether it be in Copenhagen or elsewhere, to get that message through that there doesn't always need to be a conflict between economic interests and environmental interests.
What are you doing beyond just this report?
Difficult question, yes, because we actually are doing and this is an action, but of course it's not enough.
And the I, I do believe as you mentioned, that is not something against it's, it's just working together.
It I I cannot imagine any solution that comes from a single partner, none from UN, none from any country, individual country, not from economic sector, any economic sector, but raising the awareness that we should tackle this all together, otherwise we are all lost.
So for me, it's just I would like to highlight that countries are engaged, but there are still things that are maybe little there, but we need to cope all together for the benefit of the humanity as a whole.
It's Christiana with a German press agency.
My question goes to Mr Badour.
You just mentioned answering a question of my colleague that 2024 might well exceed the record that we saw in 2023.
Can you elaborate a little bit on that?
So partly it's El Nino, but do you already now see other the signs that are pointing to to that scenario?
Thank you for the question.
If the margin by which 2023 broke the record was smaller than what we have seen, I would definitely predict 2024 to break to break the record.
So usually when in a new start in in spring of the year and follow in the next year with a peak in January and then decaying towards May, June.
And this is what the makes the following year warmer than the previous year.
But this year, as I said earlier, there are some factors that scientists are looking at to explain the large margin by which this year broke the record.
Is it only any new or some other factors?
So if next year those factors do not exist anymore, maybe 2024 will tie the record with 2023 or we are not sure exactly what would happen.
But looking at what I have seen in the literature, the other factors might not seem to be really making big influence on what recorded in 2023.
I still have more **** probability for 2024 to break the record.
We also already recorded January was the warmest January on record.
So the records are still being broken.
As you asked, what are the signs?
So we have already signs of going through a very warm year in 2024.
Not easy to say whether it will be the record, but at least it will be the amount of the two warm steer on record.
I'm of arch from Reuters.
I was wondering if you could say a little bit more about ocean heat since you singled that out as a factor of particular concern.
This is less understood than temperatures.
And can you talk about the impacts you're seeing and will this also continue?
The ocean covers more than 70% of the Earth's surface and it's a big engine of energy.
Most of the energy accumulated in the the Earth system goes actually to the ocean.
80 to 90% of that accumulated energy goes to the ocean.
This is why actually ocean has played so far very good role in keeping the temperature not more than what we have recorded today.
So as the ocean warms, the the the ocean also has its life.
We have species, we have ecosystems.
They are not also resistant to such increase in temperature on ocean heat.
For example, we keep recording the the area covered by what we call marine heat waves.
It's like what we have on land keep increasing and the 2023 recorded between 80% to 90% of the ocean that was recorded that recorded marine heat waves.
So also the marine heat waves have a very strong influence on coral bleaching and those are ecosystems that very important for fisheries and for marine lives.
So we go into kind of desertification of the ocean when we have this coral bleaching expanding very widely.
Yeah, So this is what they can say.
Perhaps if I may add to what our colleague has already mentioned, for me it's also important to highlight that it is the, the time scale of the oceans is of course not as fast as the atmosphere.
The response is not as fast.
So once a change is established, it's, it would, I would say that it's almost irreversible in time scales that go from Centennial to millennial time scales.
So the trend is really very worrying and that is because of the characteristics of water that they keep the heat content for more time than the atmosphere.
And so that's why we are paying more and more attention to what is happening to the oceans.
You have a follow up question.
If I may, Professor, I'd like to ask you about finding solutions.
You say that as it is a global problem, it should be tackled globally.
So do you have solutions and what kind of amount would be needed in order to help certain regions to find quicker solutions As Mr Badour said that you have Africa that is impacted when it doesn't have a lot of emission of pollution.
So how do you what kind of plan exists and what kind of level of financing do you need and the time frame if possible, I will do my best to provide you all of that information.
But let's start from something that I would say it's the simplest one has to do with the energy, how we consume and how we generate energy.
So I as I mentioned, we have the good news that we are moving fast towards renewables.
That is a solution, and that is particularly a solution for Africa, because the potential of Africa for solar and for hydropower is huge but is completely unrealized.
Only 1% of investments on energy go to Africa.
So why don't we put the money to change the energy production in Africa so that we can accelerate the change towards transition to green energy, not only for Africa but for the benefit of the whole world.
So for me, there we have a solution.
Investing in energy transition in Africa could benefit not only Africa but the whole world.
And that's why I think of global solutions.
It's not about thinking what was will happen on top of my head, but it's about what can I do for the benefit of the global community.
Energy for me is a key aspect where we could put a lot of emphasis and get very good results in a really short time frame.
I think we only say the first name for Agence France Press.
I had the question on the the whole sense of reading the report, listening to you and and I heard the secretary general saying, you know, we can still do something.
And but there is a real sense of despair and the things you just said about the ocean, for example, where it's going to take hundreds of years, maybe thousands to come back to something that was, is there really like how much hope is there?
And what can as as individual people?
I, I realise that it's companies, countries that can do the most and that what we do as a person is probably not that much, But is there something we can do just to have the sense that we participate?
Definitely the worst thing would would be to do nothing because that will worsen the situation so that we cannot allow that.
That's why we can argue whether 1.51 point whatever.
If we do nothing, things will become worse and that will be our responsibility.
So that where is where I put the focus on what we can do in terms of consumers, how to consume less, how to care about energy, how to care about our daily habits.
And of course, in the less developed world, we, we just need to help them.
It's not they, they can, they need to develop.
They don't have access sometimes even to water or to energy.
So it's a different level of commitment in terms of what we can expect from a developed country and and the developing world and less developed world.
But I'm certain that we all have a role to play here and the only result of doing nothing will be being worse and that is not possible.
We have two people having questions online.
I guess they didn't want me, want you to hear me.
It took a while to unmute me.
Now that I've got my voice, I may be non stoppable.
Anyway, good afternoon, Secretary General, have a couple of questions.
They're sort of variations on questions that my colleagues have already asked, but I'd like to ask them anyway.
The first one is whether have we reached a tipping point on climate change?
Is climate change irreversible?
If not, what actions must be taken in order to slow down or stop this process from happening?
And then the second question, it's a it, it sort of follows up on what Catherine had to ask you about Africa.
Is that what your outlook for the African continent is?
And what I'm thinking particularly about is that there are so many conflicts, unfortunately, in Africa, and there's a lot of instability, a lot of unstable countries.
On the continent, which could create problems for for them in order to implement adaptation measures.
So what can be done to kind of prevent the worst impacts of climate change from happening on the continent?
I know you you just mentioned, you know green energy and so forth would be a great thing for them to do and they do have the sun.
However, I think it go adaptation goes beyond that.
OK, about tipping points, we do have many reports from our experts, IPCC and several papers speaking about the tipping points.
It seems that regardless of how we can move towards net zero, we will experience something like a tipping point and and that is well explained there.
But what I would say is that there is no choice but go to net zero, that that's it.
And then we will see what climate brings.
It's not about well, it's speculating what the climate will do.
Again, it's not speculating about the the impact of the tipping point.
And in terms of Africa, you mentioned something that is quite interesting and it's also in a way covered in our report.
And it's that climate crisis even worsens the the human crisis and the and the political tensions.
So climate is also a driver of conflicts.
It's a driver of migration.
So again, it's a extremely complex problem.
And of course, energy is is not enough.
You are completely certain about that as any complex problem with social dimensions, economic dimensions, natural dimensions, biodiversity implications, It's hard for me coming from the WMO trying to find out which is the the best approach.
What I would say is that energy is not enough.
You're completely certain about this, but not helping them to adapt as much as they can under the situation they have to live will drive even more conflicts.
And that is already proved that climate is a driver of conflicts and is a driver for migrations.
And these migrations sometimes are completely out of our control and we cannot help that people that is moving because they are desperate because they cannot provide food to to their families.
So we have to help them adapt.
And the only way that the WMO can assist very effectively in this way is through the early warnings on the one hand, and providing better climate services to really understand how to adapt to different situations and how you can adapt your productivity, your habits, your agriculture or your fisheries to a new scenario.
And the last question online from Maya Plants.
Yes, thank you very much for taking my question.
I'm Maya Plants from the UN brief.
Secretary General, what a pleasure to see you.
My question is related to the financial institutions.
How is WMO working with financial institutions on mitigation and adaptation with development banks?
How is WMO collaborating, advising international financial mechanisms in order for them to incorporate your findings in their policies?
Thank you very much, Maya, for that question.
In fact, I, I had a meeting at the beginning of this year, one of my first official missions was to UN headquarters and also to meet the World Bank and IDB.
Also because I I think that we have to work hand by hand with all the development banks because we need to have mechanisms in place that are faster and go straight into the needs of the countries.
Nowadays we are discussing and the summit of the future will concentrate also in discussing this financial architecture.
I think that there are many things to improve there.
I will not go into those details because they are out of the realm of the WMO.
But what is important for us is that this resource mobilisation is fast, effective and the accountability and transparency is respected, of course.
So we are working straight with all the development agencies, including the Adaptation Fund, the Green Climate Fund, to really implement, for example, early warnings for all at the country level.
But something that it's very relevant in your question is this should also be accompanied by an engagement of each country.
WMO cannot move, yes, mobilise resources if the country is not engaged in asking for that support from the development agencies.
We need the countries engaged in prioritising the development of climate services of early warning systems, and then we can support them in accessing to that finance.
As there are no more questions.
Just to tell you that the remarks of Professor Saolo that were done at the beginning of this press conference will be available on the trailer board, together with the slides as well.
So if you want to refer to it, we will bring them to the trailer board.
Also, Please note that this week we will celebrate the World Meteorological Day.
It will be celebrated on the on Thursday the 21st, there will be a ceremony in WMO.
The actual day is on the 23rd, which is next Saturday.
And at this occasion we will launch a joint campaign, a climate action campaign, together with UNDP.
And you probably got some information about it this morning.
So a dedicated press release will also be sent out tomorrow about Walmart Day and this campaign.
So thank you very much, everyone for being here and have a good end of day.
