UN Report > Impact of Climate Change on the Planet

The relentless advance of climate change brought more drought, flooding and heatwaves to communities around the world last year, compounding threats to people’s lives and livelihoods, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a new report on climate change..

WMO latest State of the Global Climate report shows that the last eight years were the eight warmest on record, and that sea level rise and ocean warming hit new highs. Record levels of greenhouse gases caused “planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere”.

The organization says its report echoes UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ call for “deeper, faster emissions cuts to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degree Celsius”, as well as “massively scaled-up investments in adaptation and resilience, particularly for the most vulnerable countries and communities who have done the least to cause the crisis”.

In his message on Earth Day 2023, UN chief Guterres warned that “biodiversity is collapsing as one million species teeter on the brink of extinction”, and called on the world to end its “relentless and senseless wars on nature”, insisting that “we have the tools, the knowledge, and the solutions” to address climate change.