GENEVA: The UN weather agency is sounding a “red alert” about global warming, citing record-smashing increases last year in greenhouse gases, land and water temperatures and melting of glaciers and sea ice, and warning that the world’s efforts to reverse the trend have been inadequate.
The World Meteorological Organization, in a “State of the Global Climate” report released Tuesday, ratcheted up concerns that a much-vaunted climate goal is increasingly in jeopardy: That the world can unite to limit planetary warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels.
“Never have we been so close – albeit on a temporary basis at the moment – to the 1.5° C lower limit of the Paris agreement on climate change,” said Celeste Saulo, the agency’s secretary-general. “The WMO community is sounding the red alert to the world.”
The 12-month period from March 2023 to February 2024 pushed beyond that 1.5-degree limit, averaging 1.56 C (2.81 F) higher, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Service. It said the calendar year 2023 was just below 1.5 C at 1.48 C (2.66 F), but a record hot start to this year pushed beyond that level for the 12-month average.
“Earth’s issuing a distress call,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “The latest State of the Global Climate report shows a planet on the brink. Fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts.”
The latest WMO findings are especially stark when compiled in a single report. In 2023, over 90 percent of ocean waters experienced heat wave conditions at least once. Glaciers monitored since 1950 lost the most ice on record. Antarctic sea ice retreated to its lowest level ever.
“Topping all the bad news, what worries me the most is that the planet is now in a meltdown phase — literally and figuratively given the warming and mass loss from our polar ice sheets,” said Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, who wasn’t involved in the report.
Saulo called the climate crisis “the defining challenge that humanity faces” and said it combines with a crisis of inequality, as seen in growing food insecurity and migration.
WMO said the impact of heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfires and tropical cyclones, exacerbated by climate change, was felt in lives and livelihoods on every continent in 2023.
“This list of record-smashing events is truly distressing, though not a surprise given the steady drumbeat of extreme events over the past year,” said University of Arizona climate scientist Kathy Jacobs, who also wasn’t involved in the WMO report. “The full cost of climate-change-accelerated events across sectors and regions has never been calculated in a meaningful way, but the cost to biodiversity and to the quality of life of future generations is incalculable.”
But the agency also acknowledged “a glimmer of hope” in trying to keep the Earth from running too high a fever. It said renewable energy generation capacity from wind, solar and waterpower rose nearly 50 percent from 2022 to a total of 510 gigawatts.
The report comes as climate experts and government ministers are to gather in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, on Thursday and Friday to press for greater climate action, including increased national commitments to fight global warming.
“Each year the climate story gets worse; each year WMO officials and others proclaim that the latest report is a wake-up call to decision makers,” said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, a former British Columbia lawmaker.
“Yet each year, once the 24-hour news cycle is over, far too many of our elected ‘leaders’ return to political grandstanding, partisan bickering and advancing policies with demonstrable short-term outcomes,” he said. “More often than not everything else ends up taking precedence over the advancement of climate policy. And so, nothing gets done.”
UN weather agency issues ‘red alert’ on climate change after record heat, ice-melt increases in 2023
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UN weather agency issues ‘red alert’ on climate change after record heat, ice-melt increases in 2023
- WMO in a “State of the Global Climate” report released Tuesday, ratcheted up concerns that a much-vaunted climate goal is increasingly in jeopardy
- The 12-month period from March 2023 to February 2024 pushed beyond that 1.5-degree limit
OIC calls for immediate aid amid Afghan flood crisis
- Flash floods from seasonal rains in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan
RIYADH: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has issued an urgent appeal to its member states as well as relief organizations to provide aid to the Afghan people amid catastrophic flooding which has hit the country, Saudi Press Agency reported on Sunday.
Flash floods from seasonal rains in Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan killed at least 315 people since striking on Friday, a UN report said.
Rains also caused heavy damage in northeastern Badakhshan province and central Ghor province, officials said.
Since mid-April, floods have left about 100 people dead in 10 of Afghanistan’s provinces, with no region entirely spared, according to authorities.
Farmland has been swamped in a country where 80 percent of the more than 40 million people depend on agriculture to survive.
UK investigating Hamas’ claim that British hostage killed in Gaza
- Foreign secretary confirms viewing video
LONDON: The UK’s Foreign Office said on Sunday it was investigating a claim by Hamas that a British-Israeli hostage in Gaza had died from injuries sustained in an Israeli airstrike over a month ago.
Nadav Popplewell, 51, was captured along with his mother Channah Peri on Oct. 7 during a border incursion when the Palestinian group launched a surprise attack on Israel.
The Foreign Office said it was actively seeking more information on the matter.
Popplewell’s family has requested media outlets refrain from airing footage released by Hamas, showing him in captivity with visible injuries, the BBC reported.
The UK’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron, speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, confirmed viewing the video but provided no further updates on the investigation.
Cameron said: “We don’t want to say anything until we have better information.”
He described Hamas as “callous” for releasing the video and playing “with the family’s emotions in that way.”
The Foreign Office added that the department’s thoughts “are with his family at this extremely distressing time.”
The Israeli military has not issued a statement on the matter.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas has killed over 34,900 people, the majority of whom are women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Israel has reported that 128 hostages are unaccounted for.
UK mountaineer logs most Everest climbs by a foreigner, Nepali makes 29th ascent
- Both climbers used Southeast Ridge route to summit
- They were on separate expeditions guiding their clients
KATMANDU: A British climber and a Nepali guide have broken their own records for most climbs of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, hiking officials said on Sunday.
Rakesh Gurung, director of Nepal’s Department of Tourism, said Britain’s Kenton Cool, 50, and Nepali guide Kami Rita Sherpa, 54, climbed the 8,849-meter (29,032 foot) peak for the 18th and 29th time, respectively.
They were on separate expeditions guiding their clients.
“He just keeps going and going... amazing guy!” Garrett Madison of the US-based expedition organizing company Madison Mountaineering said of the Nepali climber. Madison had teamed up with Kami Rita to climb the summits of Everest, Lhotse, and K2 in 2014.
K2, located in Pakistan, is the world’s second-highest mountain and Lhotse in Nepal is the fourth-tallest.
Lukas Furtenbach of the Austrian expedition operator Furtenbach Adventures called Cool’s feat remarkable.
“He is a fundamental part of the Everest guiding industry. Kenton Cool is an institution,” Furtenbach, who is leading an expedition from the Chinese side of Everest, told Reuters.
Both climbers used the Southeast Ridge route to the summit.
Pioneered by the first summiteers, New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953, the route remains the most popular path to the Everest summit.
Kami Rita first climbed Everest in 1994 and has done so almost every year since, except for three years when authorities closed the mountain for various reasons.
He climbed the mountain twice last year.
Mountain climbing is a major tourism activity and a source of income as well as employment for Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 tallest peaks, including Everest.
Nepal has issued 414 permits, each costing $11,000 to climbers for the climbing season that ends this month.
Banning UK arms exports to Israel would strengthen Hamas, UK’s Cameron says
- Cameron said he did not support an operation in Rafah in the absence of a plan to protect hundreds of thousands of civilians
LONDON: Stopping British arms sales to Israel if it launches a ground assault on Rafah in the Gaza Strip would strengthen Hamas, Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron said on Sunday.
Israel ordered Palestinians to evacuate more of the southern city on Saturday in an indication it was pressing ahead with its plans for a ground attack, despite US President Joe Biden’s threat to withhold the supply of some weapons if it did so.
Cameron said he did not support an operation in Rafah in the absence of a plan to protect hundreds of thousands of civilians sheltering in the southern border city.
However, Britain was in a “completely different position” to the United States in terms of providing arms to Israel, he said, noting that the less than 1 percent of Israel’s weapons that came from Britain were already controlled by a strict licensing system.
“We could, if we chose to, make a sort of political message and say we are going to take that political step,” he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
“The last time I was urged to do that (...), just a few days later there was a brutal attack by Iran on Israel, including 140 cruise missiles,” he added.
Cameron said the “better answer” would be for Hamas, which controls Gaza, to accept a hostage deal.
“Just to simply announce today we’re going to change our whole approach to arms exports rather than go through our careful process, it would strengthen Hamas, it would make a hostage deal less likely, I don’t think it would be the right approach,” he said.
Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 250 people hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s military response in Gaza has killed close to 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
‘Completely helpless’: Afghanistan’s north struggles to get aid after deadly floods
- Thousands of houses and livestock were also wiped out by the flash floods
- Afghanistan is prone to natural disasters, considered vulnerable to climate change
KABUL: Survivors of the deadly flash floods that ripped through northern Afghanistan were still struggling without basic aid on Sunday, as the official death toll rose to over 300.
Heavy rains on Friday triggered flash floods across at least seven provinces, including Baghlan, Ghor, Badakhshan and Takhar, injuring more than 1,600 people and destroyed about 2,600 houses, according to the latest data from Afghanistan’s Ministry of Refugees.
Many people remain missing and livestock were wiped out as survivors picked through muddy, debris-littered streets and damaged buildings over the weekend, while authorities and humanitarian agencies deployed aid and rescue workers.
“All available resources are being mobilized, and relevant ministries and agencies are actively engaged in delivering urgent aid,” Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar Akhund, Afghanistan’s deputy minister for economic affairs, told survivors in Baghlan province on Sunday, as he reassured “unwavering support” from the Taliban-led government “until their lives are restored to normalcy.”
But some people in the province, which bore the brunt of the deluges, said that aid has yet to reach them.
“We haven’t received any support from the government or aid organizations yet. Everyone comes and asks us questions, then they go back,” Ghulam Nabi, who is from the province’s Burka district, told Arab News in a phone interview.
“We lost our houses and our lives. Everything we had is under mud now. The agriculture land and livestock, our only source of livelihood, are also completely destroyed. We don’t have the basic means to cook food for ourselves.”
Since mid-April, flash flooding and other floods had left scores of people dead and destroyed farmlands across Afghanistan, a country where 80 percent of its more than 41 million people depend on agriculture to survive.
The South Asian nation is prone to natural disasters and is considered by the UN to be one of countries most vulnerable to climate change.
Aid group Save the Children said about 600,000 people, half of them children, live in the five districts in Baghlan that have been severely impacted by the recent floods.
“Lives and livelihoods have been washed away. The flash floods tore through villages, sweeping away homes and killing livestock. Children have lost everything,” Arshad Malik, the group’s country director in Afghanistan, said in a statement.
Most of the affected areas are still cut off on Sunday, inaccessible by trucks as roads and bridges were damaged by the floods, which also impacted other public infrastructure.
People were struggling to access essential health services, the World Health Organization said in a statement, as “several health facilities remain non-operational.”
Abdul Fatah Jawad, director of Ehsas Welfare and Social Services Organization, said that many of the flood survivors were still in shock.
“People are so scared and traumatized. Most houses that survived the flooding are emptied as people fear more floods. Families took refuge in school yards and deserted areas far from residential houses,” Jawad told Arab News.
He said families are in urgent need of basic goods, such as food, drinking water, medicine, tents, blankets and shelter. Since Saturday, his organization has managed to deliver cooked food for hundreds of families.
“People, particularly children, need to eat something … They also need cash to rebuild their houses and their businesses,” he said. “Some families lost everything — house, land, livestock, business. They are completely helpless.”
