WMO report documents spiralling weather and climate impacts by World Meteorological Organization, agencies   Mar. 2024   The clear signs of human-induced climate change reached new heights in 2024, with some of the consequences being irreversible over hundreds if not thousands of years, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which also underlined the massive economic and social upheavals from extreme weather.   The World Meteorological Organization State of the Global Climate report confirmed that 2024 was the first calendar year to be more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era, with a global mean near-surface temperature of 1.55°C above the 1850-1900 average. This is the warmest year in the 175-year observational record.   WMO’s flagship report showed that:   Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide are at the highest levels in the last 800,000 years. Globally each of the past ten years were individually the ten warmest years on record. Each of the past eight years has set a new record for ocean heat content.   The 18 lowest Arctic sea-ice extents on record were all in the past 18 years. The three lowest Antarctic ice extents were in the past three years. The largest three-year loss of glacier mass on record occurred in the past three years. The rate of sea level rise has doubled since satellite measurements began.   “Our planet is issuing more distress signals -- but this report shows that limiting long-term global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius is still possible. Leaders must step up to make it happen -- seizing the benefits of cheap, clean renewables for their people and economies - with new National climate plans due this year, ” said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.   “While a single year above 1.5 °C of warming does not indicate that the long-term temperature goals of the Paris Agreement are out of reach, it is a wake-up call that we are increasing the risks to our lives, economies and to the planet,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo.   “Data for 2024 show that our oceans continued to warm, and sea levels continued to rise. The frozen parts of Earth’s surface, known as the cryosphere, are melting at an alarming rate: glaciers continue to retreat, and Antarctic sea ice reached its second-lowest extent ever recorded. Meanwhile, extreme weather continues to have devastating consequences around the world,” said Celeste Saulo.   Tropical cyclones, floods, droughts, and other hazards in 2024 led to the highest number of new displacements recorded for the past 16 years, contributed to worsening food crises, and caused massive economic losses.   Extreme weather events in 2024 led to the highest number of new annual displacements since 2008, and destroyed homes, critical infrastructure, forests, farmland and biodiversity.   The compounded effect of various shocks, such as intensifying conflict, drought and high domestic food prices drove worsening food crises in 18 countries globally by mid-2024.   Tropical cyclones were responsible for many of the highest-impact events of 2024. These included Typhoon Yagi in Viet Nam, the Philippines and southern China.   In the United States, Hurricanes Helene and Milton in October both made landfall on the west coast of Florida as major hurricanes, with economic losses of tens of billions of dollars. Over 200 deaths were associated with the exceptional rainfall and flooding from Helene, the most in a mainland United States hurricane since Katrina in 2005.   Tropical Cyclone Chido caused casualties and economic losses in the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, Mozambique and Malawi. It displaced around 100,000 people in Mozambique.   The report lists 151 unprecedented extreme weather events in 2024, meaning they were worse than any ever recorded in the region. Heatwaves in Japan left hundreds of thousands of people struck down by heatstroke. Soaring temperatures during heatwaves peaked at 49.9C at Carnarvon in Western Australia, 49.7C in the city of Tabas in Iran, and 48.5C in a nationwide heatwave in Mali.   Record rains in Italy led to floods, landslides and electricity blackouts; torrents destroyed thousands of homes in Senegal; and flash floods in Pakistan and Brazil caused major crop losses. Storms were also supercharged by global heating in 2024, with an unprecedented six typhoons in under a month hitting the Philippines.   Commenting on the report Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate in Germany said; “Global warming continues unabated, exactly as predicted correctly since the 1980s, and millions of people are increasingly suffering the consequences.. “We can only stop the warming trend by getting out of fossil fuels fast.”   “We have the solutions – but what stops us is the disinformation campaigns and lobby power of the fossil fuel industry,” Rahmstorf added. “Ignoring reality, denying the laws of physics and silencing scientists can only lead to harm, and ordinary people will pay the price for that.”   Dr Brenda Ekwurzel, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, criticized the Trump administration’s deletion of online climate information. “Attempts to hide climate science from the public will not stop us from feeling the dire impacts of climate change,” she said. “This report underscores the urgency of world leaders meeting the moment, not slashing environmental protections and federal disaster aid, sacrificing public health for the fossil fuel industry’s private profit, and gutting agencies that help form the scientific underpinnings of our global climate knowledge.”   Dr Davide Faranda, from ClimaMeter, said: “Every fraction of a degree matters. The choices we make today will determine the severity of climate impacts in the years to come.”   Prof Celeste Saulo, said the report was a wake-up call about the rising risks to lives and livelihoods. “In response, WMO and the global community are intensifying efforts to strengthen early warning systems and climate services to help society be more resilient to extreme weather,” she said. “Only half of all countries have adequate early warning systems – this must change.” She stressed that investment in weather, water and climate services was more important than ever.   http://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-report-documents-spiralling-weather-and-climate-impacts http://wmo.int/publication-series/state-of-global-climate-2024 http://www.transparency.org/en/press/transparency-international-partners-call-immediate-action-end-high-polluters-lobbys-climate-talks-cop30 Visit the related web page
	More than two billion people rely on melting glaciers and snow for fresh water by UN News, WMO, University of Zurich, agencies   Mar. 2025   The theme of World Water Day 2025 is ‘Glacier Preservation’; Protecting frozen water resources for the future   Glaciers are critical to life – their meltwater is essential for drinking water, agriculture, industry, clean energy production and healthy ecosystems. Rapidly melting glaciers are causing uncertainty to water flows, with profound impacts on people and the planet.   As the planet gets hotter, our frozen world is shrinking, making the water cycle more unpredictable. For billions of people, meltwater flows are changing, causing floods, droughts, landslides and sea level rise. Countless communities and ecosystems are at risk of devastation.   We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions to slow down glacial retreat. And, we must manage meltwater more sustainably. Saving our glaciers is a survival strategy for people and the planet.   This World Water Day, we must work together to put glacier preservation at the core of our plans to tackle climate change and the global water crisis.   United Nations World Water Development Report 2025—Mountains and glaciers: Water towers, cites:   "Most of the world's glaciers, including those in mountains, are melting at an accelerated rate worldwide.. Combined with accelerating permafrost thaw, declining snow cover, and more erratic snowfall patterns... this will have significant and irreversible impacts on local, regional, and global hydrology, including water availability."   "Globally, up to two-thirds of irrigated agriculture may depend on mountain waters," the report states, "while the number of people in lowlands that strongly depend on water from mountains increased worldwide from around 0.6 billion in the 1960s to some 1.8 billion in the 2000s. An additional 1 billion people in the lowlands benefit from supportive mountain runoff contributions."   "Billions of people depend on the fresh water that flows from increasingly fragile mountain environments."   Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, glaciers lock up about 70 per cent of the world’s freshwater reserves. They are striking indicators of climate change as they typically remain about the same size in a stable climate. But, with rising temperatures and global warming triggered by human-induced climate change, they are melting at unprecedented speed, says Sulagna Mishra, a scientific officer at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).   Last year, glaciers in Scandinavia, the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and North Asia experienced the largest annual loss of overall mass on record. In the 500-mile-long Hindu Kush mountain range, located in the western Himalayas and stretching from Afghanistan to Pakistan, the livelihoods of more than 120 million farmers are under threat from glacial loss, said Ms. Mishra.   The mountain range has been dubbed the “third pole” because of the extraordinary water resources it holds, she noted. Despite these vast freshwater reserves, it may already be too late to save them for future generations.   Large masses of perennial ice are disappearing quickly, with five out of the past six years seeing the most rapid glacier retreat on record, according to WMO. The period from 2022 to 2024 also experienced the largest-ever three-year loss.   “We are seeing an unprecedented change in the glaciers,” which in many cases may be irreversible, said Ms. Mishra.   First UN World Day for Glaciers – A call to climate action in desperate times, by Irene Quaile, Senior Media Advisor for the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative:   There are more than 275,000 glaciers worldwide, covering approximately 700,000 km². Glaciers and ice sheets store about 70% of the global freshwater. More than two billion people rely on melting glaciers and snow for fresh water.   However, we are destroying the life-supporting ice at an ever-increasing rate by heating up the global climate. With projections showing that one-third of glacier sites could disappear by 2050, the UN has declared the World Day for Glaciers to raise awareness of the urgent need for global action to protect these vital ecosystems.   2025 has been declared the “International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation”. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UNESCO describe this as a “Global Call for Action to Save Earth’s Vital Ice”, at a “critical moment for Earth’s Cryosphere”. The preservation of these crucial resources is essential not only for environmental sustainability, but also for economic stability and safeguarding livelihoods, the WMO says.   The message of this special focus year was dramatically illustrated by a comprehensive analysis of the world’s glaciers published in Nature on 19 February 2025 by an international research community led by researchers of the University of Zurich (UZH). Looking back over the last two decades the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise, revealed that global glaciers are losing ice at an alarming rate, averaging 270 billion tonnes annually from 2000 to 2023, with a significant acceleration in recent years. Since 2000, mountain glaciers have actually lost more ice than the Greenland ice sheet, and more than twice that of the Antarctic ice sheet.   This made glaciers a major driver of sea-level rise during these two decades: about 18mm of sea level rise can be attributed to mountain glaciers since the year 2000, making glaciers currently the second-largest contributor to global sea-level rise after expansion from the warming of the ocean.   In addition, glacier melt means the loss of essential freshwater resources in many regions. “To put this in perspective, the 273 billion [metric] tons of ice lost in one single year amounts to what the entire global population consumes in 30 years, assuming three liters per person and day,” states Michael Zemp, UZH professor at the Department of Geography, who led the study.   The World Meteorological Organization (WMO)’s latest State of the Global Climate Report published on March 19, 2025, confirms the findings:   “The period 2022-2024 represents the most negative three-year glacier mass balance on record. Seven of the ten most negative mass balance years since 1950 have occurred since 2016.   Glacier retreat increases short-term hazards, harms economies and ecosystems and long-term water security,” the UN weather and climate experts conclude. There can be no doubt as to the reason:   “The clear signs of human-induced climate change reached new heights in 2024, which was likely the first calendar year to be more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era, with a global mean near-surface temperature of 1.55°C above the 1850-1900 average.”   2025 – and we are only a quarter into it – has also been the year when our CO2 levels reached a “Grim Milestone for Earth’s Polar Regions”, crossing the 430 ppm mark “for the first time since records began, and likely for the first time in at least 3 million years”, as the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative puts it.   This “raises a red flag that today’s fossil fuel emissions are pushing the climate into greater and more deadly extremes,” the cryosphere experts write.   “Passing 430 ppm should be a wake-up call, especially given the accelerated response we are seeing of glaciers and ice sheets to current warming,” says Dr. James Kirkham, Chief Scientist of the Ambition on Melting Ice coalition of governments “, which includes both Germany and Peru.   The most ambitious mitigation measures outlined by the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report to slow and reverse climate change have CO2 levels peak at 430 ppm.   “Paired with the fact that 2024 was the hottest year since records began in 1880, rising above the 1.5°C for the first time, these pressing realities serve as a distress signal for the planet”, says ICCI, headed by former diplomat and cryosphere expert Pam Pearson.   “Breaking the 430 ppm level of CO2 in the atmosphere is a tragic threshold, but only underscores the need for a focus on immediate greenhouse gas emission cuts – keeping warming close to 1.5°C remains essential and achievable, but barely,” said Dr. Joeri Rogelj, IPCC lead author, of Imperial College London.”   The past year was the warmest year in the 175-year observational record. The State of the Global Climate 2024 report underlines the massive economic and social upheavals from extreme weather and the long-term impacts of record ocean heat and sea-level rise.   “Today’s observations raise a clear signal that the Earth is responding to fossil fuel emissions faster and more intensely than anticipated”, writes the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative.   “There’s no time like the present?” It could be “now or never”. Preserving our glaciers means halting runaway climate warming and the existential threats it poses to life on our planet as we know it.   http://wmo.int/news/media-centre/glacier-melt-will-unleash-avalanche-of-cascading-impacts http://www.un-glaciers.org/en/key-messages http://www.news.uzh.ch/en/articles/media/2025/Glacier-loss.html http://iceblog.org/2025/03/20/first-un-world-day-for-glaciers-a-call-to-climate-action-in-desperate-times/ http://iccinet.org/statecryo24/ http://www.carbonbrief.org/glacier-melt-threatens-water-supplies-for-two-billion-people-un-warns http://www.unwater.org/publications/un-world-water-development-report-2025 http://www.un.org/en/observances/water-day Visit the related web page
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