We have witnessed an increase in sea level rise. From an average of around 2 mm per year about 20 years ago to over 4.5 mm per year in recent times. More than 90 percent of the excess heat is being stored in the ocean, leading to ocean warming. At the same time, oceans are serving as a sink for CO2, and that’s changing the chemical composition of seawater. The pH balance of the oceans is now the lowest in 26,000 years.
All-time high temperature records were broken in Canada last summer, when some parts touched 49.6 degree Celsius. In Europe, we broke all-time records in Southern Italy with 48.8 C. Similar trends were witnessed in Turkey and Spain as well.
On one hand, we had intense droughts and heat waves hitting the western parts of North America and severe droughts in the Middle East. On the other hand, we had massive flooding and heavy causalities in other countries, including Germany, China and India. Very recently, there has been deadly flooding in South Africa.
We have seen two years of a very large Antarctic ozone hole, which is also partly related to climate change. When we are warming the lower atmosphere, we are cooling the stratosphere, and these ozone depletion conditions are becoming more favorable because of climate change.
Of course, this overall warming will continue. The global temperature records depend on the status of the oceans — the El Niño and La Niña variability. The temperatures are higher in El Niño years than the La Niña years. The past few years have been La Niña years. That’s why we haven’t broken the global temperature record. But during an El Niño year, it’s very likely that we would break the earlier 2016 record.
We have the biggest ice masses over Greenland and Antarctica. In Greenland, we have sea ice, which, if it melts fully, could lead to potentially 7 meters rise in sea levels. Antarctica has glaciers, which could lead to 60 meters rise in sea levels if they melt fully.
We have already reached a risky level of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. We expect that the melting of glaciers will continue for the coming centuries independent of our success in climate mitigation. And this negative trend in weather patterns will continue for the coming decades.
But we haven’t lost the game. If we succeed in reaching the Paris Agreement — the 1.5 to 2 degree C limits, then we could cap this negative trend in climate by the 2060s. But if we fail, we will see higher numbers and even more casualties.
If you look at the estimates of the International Energy Agency, we are supposed to see a slight increase in total global emissions instead of a drop. So, the 1.5 C target is very ambitious. But it can be achieved if there is a higher level of ambition, especially among the emerging economies. I would say that 2 C is still a realistic target, but 1.5 C is not so likely at the moment. We need to create the means to remove carbon from the atmosphere. But so far, we don’t have such technologies.
The Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the world. And there has been so-called “positive feedback effect”, which is caused by melting of snow and ice. The radiative properties of snow and ice are different from dark ocean or dark soil. And that’s why we have seen this change. But what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic; it impacts weather conditions in the whole of the Northern hemisphere.
One of the factors behind the dynamics of atmosphere is the temperature difference between Arctic and the Equator. As a result, we are seeing stagnant weather conditions more often, which means heat waves and drought during the summer half of the year, and severe cold spells during the winter.
The past few years have been La Niña years. That's why we haven't been breaking the global temperature record. But during an El Niño year, it's very likely that we would break the earlier 2016 record.
The situation is different in the Antarctic, which is a continent and is quite symmetric. We have seen melting of the sea ice in the Antarctic area, but not as much as in the Arctic. The Arctic has floating sea ice, whereas the Antarctic is a solid continent with thick mass of glaciers. So, the melting is not the same but the Antarctic glaciers have also started melting.
The melting of Greenland has caused double the sea level rise as compared to Antarctic. But in the long run, the Antarctic melting will dominate the sea level rise.
Climate mitigation is of course essential for the welfare of future generations and the welfare of our planet. But it is equally important to pay attention to climate adaptation, which could help us avoid losses in terms of both economic and human lives.
One of the most powerful ways to adapt to climate change is to invest in early warning services. Currently, only half of the 193 WMO member countries have proper early warning services in place. This means when high impact weather event hits, the economic losses and casualties are higher.
The UN Secretary-General has already announced that within the next five years, every country would have early warning systems in place, and WMO will coordinate the proposal at the next COP27 meeting in Egypt this November. We have to invest in both ground-based observation systems as well as enhancing manpower skills and access to products in developing countries. We also need to pay attention to impact-based forecasting, which means advance warning around the impacts of storms, floods, droughts, heat waves or coastal inundation events.
We are just preparing a major financing package to be approved by the next COP27 in Egypt. We have to enhance the observing systems in some countries, which have major limitations. There’s a lack of ground-based stations and also balloon sounding stations for vertical profile measurements, especially in Africa, and the Caribbean and Pacific islands. This where we hope the Systematic Observations Financing Facility will improve the situation.
Our aim is to mobilize USD 400 million during the coming five years to install more stations in these regions. The plan also includes installing vertical sounding measurement stations that would enhance the quality of the early warning services in those regions. These measures will also have positive impact on the quality of early warning services worldwide, because weather doesn’t know any borders.
Thanks to satellite observations, we have been able to enhance the accuracy of early warning services, and especially in the Southern hemisphere where we don’t have so many ground-based stations. We are grateful to the various space agencies and satellite operators in providing us with the required data.
We are preparing a global system where we combine data from ground-based test stations. WMO is running a global atmosphere network of about 200 stations. Then we have satellite measurements of greenhouse gases from USA, China, Japan, and soon also from the European Space Agency and EUMETSAT.
Finally, we also have models to simulate the behavior of greenhouse gases in the real atmosphere. Currently, we don’t fully understand why the concentration of methane is still growing, and there’s a need to enhance the observing systems to better understand this phenomenon.
Despite all this, we also have data gaps. One of the messages from the most recent IPCC report is that in many parts of the world — parts of Africa and Asia, and also some parts of Americas — we don’t have enough data to confidently say if a certain weather phenomenon is a trend. Then, we have major gaps in things like rainfall observations.
There’s a need to enhance these observing sites and the Systematic Observations Financing Facility aims at filling those gaps. With satellites, you can get some complementary information on clouds and so forth, but you also need these classical in-situ measurements.
