Climate ‘red alert’ as major global warming indicators smashed in 2023

The United Nations has issued a “red alert” warning over the climate after global temperatures broke records “by a clear margin” last year.

The World Meteorlogical Organisation, a UN agency, said extreme weather events were “off the charts” in 2023.

Air and ocean temperatures were the warmest on record last year, while records were conclusively beaten for both the rise in sea level and the melting of glaciers and Antarctic ice.

The global average surface temperature reached 1.45°C above pre-industrial levels last year, just below the 1.5°C of warming that scientist fear will accelerate climate chaos, according to a new WMO report.

Celeste Saulo, WMO secretary-general, said: “The WMO community is sounding the red alert to the world.

“Climate change is about much more than temperatures.”

“What we witnessed in 2023, especially with the unprecedented ocean warmth, glacier retreat and Antarctic sea ice loss, is cause for particular concern.”

Till Kuhlbrodt, of the University of Reading, who wasn’t involved in the report, said: “Some of the climate and weather extremes we have seen in 2023 are markedly beyond anything we have seen before in the instrumental record.

“For the North Atlantic, the sea surface temperature left the known range of variability in March last year and has not returned since. These observations are really concerning.

“The warmer oceans make heavy precipitation events more likely and speed up sea-level rise. Climate and Earth System scientists now need to assess in detail what the drivers of these unprecedented extremes are. It is already clear though that the accelerating global heating, caused mainly by burning oil, coal and gas, does make climate and weather extremes ever more likely.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.