COP26: WMO’s ‘State of Climate Report’ Reveals Alarming Situation

The COP (Conference of Parties) 26 has started in Glasgow, the United Kingdom, from October 31. This year’s climate summit is being considered a crucial meet as there is not much time left for humanity to mitigate the man-made climate crisis. The unabated high emission levels, the alarming rise in sea level, extreme weather conditions, droughts and floods -- and all other indicators that denote the deteriorating global climate due to anthropogenic factors demand immediate, serious and effective policies by the nations. The COP26 is expected to help nations come up with frameworks and pledges to reduce the onslaught on the climate.

Several reports have come out in the week before the climate summit began, in an effort to highlight the continuous damages meted out to the global climate by human activities and the possible devastating outcomes. The latest of such reports is the “State of Climate Report 2021”, published by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) on the starting day of COP26.  This report again reveals the alarming climatic situation.

The WMO report states that extreme weather events comprising intensive heat waves and massive floods are the “new normal” and the world is “changing before our eyes”.

The assessment report alarmingly states that the average global temperature in 20 years, starting from 2002, is on the track of exceeding 1 degree Celsius above the pre-industrial level. This is going to happen for the first time ever. The sea levels have also risen to a new high in the year 2021.

The ‘State of the Climate’ report provides a glimpse of  the climate indicators—temperature, sea level rise, extreme weather events, and ocean conditions etc.

Past seven years, including this one, according to the report, are the warmest on record combined with the greenhouse gases touching record high concentrations in the atmosphere.

With the greenhouse gases rising overwhelmingly, the concomitant temperature rise is driving the planet into an “uncharted territory”, and intensified impacts are seen across the world, the WMO report stated.

On the report and the worsening climatic condition, Prof. Petteri Taalas of WMO was quoted as saying, “Extreme events are the new norm. There is mounting scientific evidence that some of these bear the footprint of human-induced climate change.”

Prof. Taalas also put a detailed account regarding the extreme weather events that have been experienced this year—

• For the first time on record, the peak of Greenland ice sheets experienced rains rather than snows.
• Intense heat waves ravaged through parts of Canada and USA, pushing the temperature of a village in British Columbia, Canada to a soaring 50 degree Celsius.
• In California, the death-valley touched 54.4 degree Celsius in one of the multiple heat waves that blew through south western USA.
• In China, an area experienced extreme rain, worth of months’ rainfall in just few hours.
• Parts of Europe experienced severe floods which caused many casualties and loss of billions.
• Sub tropical South America, on the other hand, saw a second successive drought which resulted in reduced river basin flow, adversely impacting agriculture, transport and energy production.

The report reiterated that the most alarming situation is the rise in global sea levels. The sea level rise had been measured precisely with the help of satellite based systems for the first time in 1990s and since then, the levels went up by an amount of 2.1 millimetres between the period of 1993-2002.

Again, from 2013-2021, the sea level rise has more than doubled up to 4.4 millimetres, which is a result of accelerated ice loss from the glaciers and ice sheets.

 Jonathan Bomber, the director of the Bristol Glaciology Centre, commented on the alarming sea level rise saying, “Sea levels are rising faster now than at any other time in the last two millennia. If we continue on our current trajectory, that rise could exceed 2m by 2100 displacing some 630 million people worldwide. The consequences of that are unimaginable.”

Again, on the rise of temperature, the year 2021 is likely to be the 6th or 7th warmest year on record, the report says, along with the fact that global temperature is going to cross 1 degree Celsius rise for the first time over a period of 20 years.

“The fact that the 20-year average has reached more than 1.0C above pre-industrial levels will focus the minds of delegates at COP26 aspiring to keep global temperature rise to within the limits agreed in Paris six years ago,” commented Stephen Belcher, chief scientist at the UK Met Office, who contributed to the WMO report.