By Kate Abnett and Gabrielle Tétrault- Frith
BRUSSELS/GENEVA ( Reuters ) -Each of the past 12 months ranked as the best on record in year- on- time evaluations, the EU’s climate change surveillance company said on Wednesday, as U. N. Secretary- General António Guterres called for urgent action to avert” weather hell”.
According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the average global temperature for the 12-month period until the end of May was 1.63 degrees Celsius ( 2. 9 degrees Fahrenheit ), making it the warmest period since record-keeping first started in 1940.
This 12-month average does not indicate that the world has yet reached the 1.5 C ( 2. 7 F) global warming threshold, which describes a temperature average over time that scientists warn could have more severe and irreversible effects.
There is now a 66 % chance, according to a separate report from last year’s 66 % chance, that at least one of the next five years will have an average temperature that temporarily exceeds 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, emphasized how quickly the world was moving in the opposite direction and how the world was failing to stabilize its climate system.
In a speech to mark World Environment Day, Guterres stated that” the likelihood of such a breach was close to zero in 2015.
By 2030, Guterres urged a 30 % reduction in global fossil fuel production and use as the world’s economy is about to change.
” We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell”, he said, adding:” The battle for 1.5 degrees will be won or lost in the 2020s”.
‘ WAY OFF TRACK ‘
Despite international agreements designed to halt their release and a rapid expansion of renewable energy, carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, the main cause of climate change, reached a record high last year.
Coal, oil and gas still provide more than three quarters of the world’s energy, with global oil demand remaining strong.
According to WMO Deputy Secretary- General Ko Barrett, the world is “way off track” from its goal of limiting warming to 1.5 C, which is the main goal of the world’s 2015 Paris Accord.
According to Barrett,” We must urgently do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or we will pay an increasingly high price in terms of trillions of dollars in economic costs, millions of lives affected by more extreme weather, and extensive damage to the environment and biodiversity.”
Barrett described the La Nina weather conditions ‘ ability to” slowly blip in the upward curve” in the heat felt around the world as” a mere blip in the upward curve.”
She said,” We all need to be aware that we need to reverse this curve and do it right away.”
According to the WMO data, at least one of the next five years is likely to be even warmer than 2023, despite last year recording as the warmest calendar year on record at 1.45 C ( 2.61 F) above pre-industrial temperatures.
Scientists at Copernicus claimed that while there were some unexpected developments, such as the recent steep loss of Antarctic sea ice, the overall climate data was in line with predictions of how rising greenhouse gas emissions would heat the planet.
Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said,” We have not seen anything like this in the last several thousand years.”
Guterres took aim at fossil fuel companies.
The fossil fuel industry, the “godfathers of climate chaos,” he said, “rake in record profits and feast off trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies.”
He compared the restrictions on advertising for harmful substances like tobacco to those in many other countries, saying,” I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies, and I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil fuel advertising.”
( Reporting by Kate Abnett in Brussels, Gabrielle Tétrault- Farber in Geneva, and Valerie Volcovici in Washington, D. C., Editing by Katy Daigle, Alexander Smith, Alexandra Hudson )
