Tag Archives: #climatechange

38℃ record Arctic temperature confirmed, others likely to follow: WMO

A new and disturbing high temperature record for the Arctic of 38 degrees Celsius, or just over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, was confirmed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Tuesday.

“The World Meteorological Organization has this morning recognized a temperature of 38C which is a staggering 100.4F in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk,” WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis told journalists in Geneva. “It was recorded last year (on) 20 June 2020 and we have recognized it as a new Arctic record.”

Describing the temperature as “more befitting the Mediterranean than the Arctic”, WMO explained in a statement that average temperatures over Arctic Siberia reached 10C above normal for much of last summer.

“The WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes has never had so many ongoing simultaneous investigations,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri  Taalas, in a statement. More

Madagascar: ‘World cannot look away’ as 1.3 million face severe hunger

The international community must step up support to Madagascar, where more than one million people in the south are facing severe hunger, the top UN aid official there said on Thursday in a renewed appeal for solidarity and funding. 

The impacts of the most acute drought in over 40 years, combined with sandstorms and pests, have made it nearly impossible for people in the Grand Sud to grow their own food for at least three years now.

“The world cannot look away. People in Madagascar need our support now, and into the future,” said Issa Sanogo, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the country.

The drought has left more than 1.3 million people facing severe hunger, including some 30,000 people who are facing life-threatening famine-like conditions. The crisis has forced families to take their children out of school so they can help with tasks such as finding food and water.  More

‘Serious risk’ COP26 may not deliver, warns Guterres, urging more climate action

There is a “serious risk” that the UN climate conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, “will not deliver”, the UN chief told journalists on Friday in Rome, just ahead of the G20 Summit of leading industrialized nations.

Secretary-General António Guterres warned that current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), formal government commitments to progressively ambitious climate actions, still condemn the world to a “calamitous” 2.7 degrees Celsius increase in global warming.

“Even if recent pledges were clear and credible, and there are serious questions about some of them, we are still careening towards climate catastrophe”, he said.

If we want real success…we need more ambition and more action”, he said.“The most important objective of this G20 Summit must be to re-establish trust – by tackling the main sources of mistrust – rooted in injustices, inequalities and geo-political divides”, he underscored.

“We need maximum ambition, from all countries on all fronts”, according to Mr. Guterres. “Ambition on adaptation means donors…allocating at least half of their climate finance towards adaptation and resilience”.  More

Time running out for countries on climate crisis front line

The world’s running out of time to limit global temperature rise to below two degrees Celsius, a matter of life or death for climate vulnerable countries on the front line of the crisis, the UN Secretary General reiterated on Thursday.

Speaking to the first Climate Vulnerable Finance Summit of 48 nations systemically exposed to climate related disasters, António Guterres said they needed reassurance that financial and technical support will be forthcoming.

“To rebuild trust, developed countries must clarify now, how they will effectively deliver $100 billion dollars in climate finance annually to the developing world, as was promised over a decade ago”, he said.

The UN chief said that to get the “world back on its feet”, restore cooperation between governments and recover from the pandemic in a climate resilient way, the most vulnerable countries had to be properly supported. More

CMS Ambassador and Australian Human swan’ to make 3,000-mile UK flight to raise climate awareness

Australian adventurer and UN CMS Ambassador, Sacha Dench, will this week start her 3,000-mile journey in an effort to demonstrate what effect climate change has on biodiversity and in particular, migratory birds. This record-breaking attempt is planned to coincide with the lead up to the COP 26 UN climate change conference taking place in Glasgow later this year.

Sacha will take off near Glasgow today in a electric paramotor, flying anti-clockwise around the coast and returning six weeks later. She will stop along the way to speak with school students and locals about climate challenges and their thoughts on solutions. By documenting her journey through compelling images and story telling, Sacha hopes to reach millions more.

Julia Dean from UNIC Canberra spoke to Sacha about why care about climate, more on what she is doing to promote the issues and her call out to world leaders leading up to COP26.

But she first asked Sacha what was the formative experience that sparked her passion as an environmentalist.

 

Chilliest Spring In Years is Cold Comfort As CO2 Emissions Rise: WMO

Confirmation that Europe has just had its chilliest Spring in years is cold comfort for the planet, amid rising greenhouse gas levels which will bring negative impacts for generations to come, UN weather experts said on Tuesday.

“Europe had its coldest spring since 2013; the average March-May temperature was 0.45 degrees Celsius (C) below the 1991-2020 average,” said Clare Nullis, spokesperson for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

“Just because this year has got off to a relatively cool start by recent standards, does not mean that we’ve hit the pause button on climate change”, Ms. Nullis added, reiterating a recent WMO warning that there is a 90 per cent chance that one of the next five years will be the warmest on record.

Global averages still high
According to data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (ECMWF), Europe’s cold May contrasted with the global average temperature for the month, which was 0.26°C higher than the 1991-2020 mean.

Temperatures were well above average over western Greenland, north Africa, the Middle East and northern and western Russia while below-average May temperatures were reported over the southern and central United States, parts of northern Canada, south-central Africa, most of India, eastern Russia, and eastern Antarctica. More

Progress Urged as May-June Climate Change Conference Opens in Preparation for COP26

UN Climate Change News, 31 May 2021  Against the backdrop of a new international warning that the world is dangerously close to exceeding the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rise at 1.5C, governments today began three weeks (May 31 to June 17, 2021) of virtual discussions designed to pave the way for a successful UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) this November in Glasgow.

Following a year of limited and informal virtual meetings in 2020 due to COVID-19, these subsidiary body meetings provide governments with opportunities to make progress on several outstanding technical issues that are key to achieving success at COP26, implementing the Paris Agreement and ultimately limiting global temperatures to 1.5C. More