Warmest eight years on document and rising sea ranges, as COP27 launches

The previous eight years have been on monitor to be the warmest on document, the World Meteorological Organisation mentioned in its newest report, in a planetary “misery sign”, as leaders started to collect for the COP27 local weather summit in Egypt.

The findings have been printed in the course of the opening session in Sharm el-Sheikh, the place the contentious problem of “loss and harm” was placed on the formal agenda for the primary time.

“Loss and harm” has grow to be the shorthand for the decision for funding by rich nations for poor nations struggling the results of local weather change. The matter has grown extra pressing this yr, marked by a succession of maximum climate occasions together with widespread flooding in Pakistan and Nigeria most not too long ago.

The WMO’s state of the local weather annual report mentioned the worldwide common temperature in 2022 was round 1.15C increased than pre-industrial ranges. The Paris local weather accord dedicated nations to restrict warming to 1.5C ideally.

“As COP27 will get underneath method, our planet is sending a misery sign,” mentioned UN secretary-general António Guterres, describing the report as a “chronicle of local weather chaos.”

“Change is occurring with catastrophic pace — devastating lives and livelihoods on each continent,” he mentioned.

Greater than 110 heads of state and authorities will convene on Monday to debate vitality safety, inexperienced know-how, the best way to minimize emissions extra rapidly and shield nature and the way greatest to help probably the most weak.

The UK on Sunday formally handed over the COP presidency to Egypt, with the agenda for the summit negotiations authorised solely following a tense 48 hours of ultimate wrangling. Greater than 50,000 representatives of presidency, businesses, civil society and media are anticipated to attend.

Regardless of deciding on the final minute to journey to Egypt, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak urged different nations to “ship” on the pledges made at COP26 in Glasgow, in a weekend speech. “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and contemptible manipulation of vitality costs has solely bolstered the significance of ending our dependence on fossil fuels,” he mentioned.

Incoming Egyptian COP president Sameh Shoukry welcomed the inclusion of loss and harm on the agenda, and the euphemistically described “change” within the place of sure nations able to grapple with it.

At COP26, rich nations, together with the US and the EU bloc, pushed again on a proposal by weak nations to create a brand new loss and harm finance facility. Their resistance relies on issues that concessions may be considered as compensation for the historic greenhouse fuel emissions generated by their industrialisation.

Just lately appointed head of the UNFCCC local weather change oversight physique, Simon Stiell, from Grenada, mentioned nations now wanted to determine the extent to which “politics” would affect the “progress that we have to make.”

Warning pictures have been contained within the WMO report. The “tell-tale indicators and impacts of local weather change have gotten extra dramatic”, it concluded.

The speed of sea degree rise had doubled since 1993, and the previous two and a half years alone accounted for 10 per cent of the whole rise in sea ranges since satellite tv for pc measurements started practically 30 years in the past, it mentioned.

This yr has additionally been marked by record-breaking glacier melting within the European Alps, whereas the Greenland ice sheet additionally shrank, the report discovered.

Sea degree rise is a specific menace to small island nations, such because the Bahamas and Barbados. Of their opening remarks, the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) mentioned the loss and harm agenda merchandise was “the ground of what’s acceptable; it’s our naked minimal.”

The group needs a brand new Loss and Injury Response Fund to be created at COP27 that’s operational “by 2024.” 

“We aren’t asking for favours,” Aosis mentioned in an announcement. “We is not going to be silent victims to the price of air pollution created by others, for the revenue of the few.”