Climate change is spiralling out of control: Damning report reveals how records were smashed for...
is spiralling out of control, with many of the consequences now 'irreversible', a damning report has found. In 2024, records were smashed for greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures, and sea level rise. Last year was the hottest in the 175-year record and the first to have an average surface temperature 1.5C hotter than the pre-industrial average - the limit nations committed to under the Paris Agreement. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the effects of these changes are likely to be felt for hundreds, if not thousands of years to come. The report warns that this is causing significant knock-on effects for the wider climate, including shrinking ice sheets and glaciers and increasingly violent extreme weather. Although these record-high temperatures were enhanced by a warming El Nino event, experts say that greenhouse gas emissions were the primary driver. The total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere hit 3.276 trillion tonnes - the highest level in over 800,000 years. Professor Stephen Belcher, chief scientist, says: 'The latest planetary health check tells us that Earth is profoundly ill. Many of the vital signs are sounding alarms.' The WMO's report shows that every key sign of human-caused climate change reached new heights in 2024. Most noticeably, last year followed an ongoing trend of increasing surface temperatures. Greenhouse gases like CO2 act like a thermal blanket over Earth, preventing heat from the sun escaping back out into space. The WMO found that the global CO2 concentration hit 420 parts per million (ppm) last year. That is 2.3 ppm higher than in 2022 and 151 per cent of the level before industrialisation started adding large amounts of CO2 into the air. As humans produce ever more emissions, this has Last year, the global mean surface temperature was approximately 1.55C (2.79F) above the average for 1850-1900, the period defined as pre-industrial. Although that is above the warming limits laid out in the Paris Agreement, the agreement has not been breached because the long-term warming remains below 1.5C. The WMO estimates that the long-term warming, averaged over decades rather than a single year, is now 1.34-1.41C (2.41-2.54F) above the pre-industrial average. Likewise, since 90 per cent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases is stored in the ocean, increasing emissions causes the oceans to warm. In 2024, ocean temperatures were at their highest level in the 65 years in which they have been recorded. Worryingly, these findings also show that the rate of ocean warming has significantly increased. The rate of ocean warming in the two decades from 2005 to 2024 was more than double that in the period between 1960 and 2005. Additionally, climate projections show that the ocean will continue to warm for at least the rest of the 21st century even in the most optimistic low-emissions scenarios. Likewise, since CO2 will stay in the atmosphere for generations, the effects of our pollution today will be felt for hundreds of years to come. However, the warming climate is already having an immediate impact on the lives of millions of people today. WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo says: 'Data for 2024 show that our oceans continued to warm, and sea levels continued to rise. 'The frozen parts of Earths surface, known as the cryosphere, : glaciers continue to retreat, and Antarctic sea-ice reached its second-lowest extent ever recorded.' In Antarctica, the maximum and minimum sea-ice extents for the year were This was also the third year in a row that the minimum daily sea-ice extent dipped below two million kilometres squared (772,000 square miles). In the Arctic, the minimum daily extent of sea-ice in the Arctic in 2024 was 4.28 million kilometres squared (1.65 million square miles), the seventh lowest extent on record. Likewise, the largest three-year loss in glacier size occurred over the last three years, with particularly big losses occurring in Norway, Sweden, Svalbard, and the Andes. As the world's ice melts and the oceans warm, this also triggers the global sea level to rise. Recent studies have also shown that Earth's glaciers are melting so fast that they now While the world's glaciers have lost five per cent of their mass on average, glaciers in central Europe have already shrunk by almost 40 per cent. Since 2000, this has increased the global sea level by 0.7 inches (1.8cm) - making glaciers the second biggest contributor to the rising ocean. The WMO's report warns that global sea levels are now the highest since the satellite record began in 1993, and the rate of increase has only become faster. The rate of increase in the decade from 2015 to 2024 was double that from 1993 to 2002, increasing from 2.1 mm per year to 4.7 mm per year. 'Meanwhile, extreme weather continues to have devastating consequences around the world,' says Ms Saulo. This is because a warmer climate is capable of storing more water and more energy, making extreme weather events more frequent and more violent when they do occur. At the same time, studies have shown that many areas around the globe have undergone rapid and dramatic shifts from one climate extreme to another. Some countries that were extremely dry are now extremely wet and vice versa, while some areas are experiencing This means that many urban areas are being battered by back-to-back years of flooding and drought. The WMO report warns that floods, tropical storms, droughts, and other hazards in 2024 led to more people being displaced in a 12-month period than in any of the last 16 years. In the United States, Hurricanes Helene and Milton in October both Over 200 deaths were associated with the exceptional rainfall and flooding from Hurricane Helene, However, the WMO says that it is not too late to mitigate some of the worst impacts of climate change. Ms Saulo says: 'We are making progress but need to go further and need to go faster. Only half of all countries worldwide have adequate early warning systems. This must change.' The long-term average warming is yet to exceed the limits of the Paris Agreement and experts agree that every degree of warming avoided will lead to measurable reductions in the impacts of climate change. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added: '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.'