(Image source from: dnaindia.com)

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Calls for Urgent Climate action and increased ambition ahead of his climate summit in September.

He made this comments after the United Nations World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) released data showing the last 4 years were officially recorded as warmest.

These findings were based on the monitoring performed by five leading international organisations, also shows that the global average surface temperature in 2018 was approximately 1° Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) baseline.

“The long-term temperature trend is far more important than the ranking of individual years, and that trend is an upward one,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“The 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years. The degree of warming during the past four years has been exceptional, both on land and in the ocean.” “Temperatures are only part of the story. Extreme and high impact weather affected many countries and millions of people, with devastating repercussions for economies and ecosystems in 2018,” he said.

“Many of the extreme weather events are consistent with what we expect from a changing climate. This is a reality we need to face up to. Greenhouse gas emission reduction and climate adaptation measures should be a top global priority,” said Taalas.

The data was first released in November 2018 with concern, Guterres said “It confirms ‘the urgency of addressing climate action’, and echoes the science presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its October 2018 special report on the impacts of a global warming of 1.5°C.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will held convention on Climate Summit on 23 September later this layer.

Summit will focus on 9 major areas of raised ambition on climate mitigation, managing industrial transition, how to manage the transition to alternative energy sources, coming up with solutions through agriculture, forests, oceans and nature-related environments.

And also on infrastructure, cities and through local action, notably issues of carbon pricing, climate finance, increased resilience and adaptation, especially for the most vulnerable as well citizen and political mobilisation.

Guterres, is working closely with Member States and non-party stakeholders to enable outcomes in these areas to the Summit, in order to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which countries agreed upon collectively to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Informing the discussions at the Summit alongside other key scientific reports, WMO will issue the full 2018 State of the Climate report this coming March.

It will provide a wide overview of temperature variability and trends, high-impact events, and key indicators of long-term climate change such as increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, sea level rise and ocean acidification.

It will be accompanied by UN-wide policy recommendations statement for decision-makers on the interplay between weather, climate and water supply, and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

-Sai Kumar