Global temperatures 'smashed' heat records last year, as heatwaves stalked oceans and glaciers suffered record ice loss, the United Nations said Tuesday -- warning 2024 was likely to be even hotter.
A toddler gets a drink of water from her mother as they and a dozen other residents of the North Kivu town of Nyanzale gather in front of a UN peacekeepers base in the town of Rwindi on November 19, 2008.Global temperatures “smashed” heat records last year, as heatwaves stalked oceans and glaciers suffered record ice loss, the United Nations said Tuesday — warning 2024 was likely to be even hotter.
“Earth’s issuing a distress call,” he said in a video message, pointing out that “fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts”, and warning that “changes are speeding up”. “What we witnessed in 2023, especially with the unprecedented ocean warmth, glacier retreat and Antarctic sea ice loss, is cause for particular concern,” Saulo said.
Meanwhile key glaciers worldwide suffered the largest loss of ice since records began in 1950, “driven by extreme melt in both western North America and Europe”. The agency highlighted that the global mean sea level rise over the past decade was more than double the rate in the first decade of satellite records.