GENEVA: The Paris climate agreement’s goals “are in great peril” and 2024 is on track to break new temperature records, the United Nations warned Monday as COP29 talks opened in Baku.
The period from 2015-2024 will also be the warmest decade ever recorded, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a new report based on six international datasets.
That is accelerating the shrinking of glaciers and sea-level rise, and unleashing extreme weather that has wrought havoc on communities and economies around the world.
“The ambitions of the Paris Agreement are in great peril,” WMO said as global leaders gathered for high-stakes climate talks in Azerbaijan.
Under the Paris agreement, nearly every nation on Earth committed to work to limit warming to “well below” two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and preferably below 1.5°C.
But the EU climate monitor Copernicus has already said that 2024 will exceed the 1.5°C.
This does not amount to an immediate breach of the Paris deal, which measures temperatures over decades, but it suggests the world is far off-track on its goals.
WMO, which relies on a broader dataset, also said 2024 would likely breach the 1.5°C limit, and break the record set just last year.
“Climate catastrophe is hammering health, widening inequalities, harming sustainable development, and rocking the foundations of peace. The vulnerable are hardest hit,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement.
Analysis by a team of international experts established by WMO found that long-term global warming was currently likely to be around 1.3°C, compared to the 1850-1900 baseline, the agency said.
“Every fraction of a degree of warming matters,” stressed WMO chief Celeste Saulo.
“Whether it is at a level below or above 1.5°C of warming, every additional increment of global warming increases climate extremes, impacts and risks.”
Monday’s report cautioned that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, which lock in future temperature increases even if emissions fall, hit new highs in 2023 and appeared to have climbed further this year.
Ocean heat is also likely to be comparable to the record highs seen last year, it added.
Saulo warned that a string of devastating extreme weather events across the world this year “are unfortunately our new reality.”
They are, she said, “a foretaste of our future.”
UN: Paris agreement climate goals ‘in great peril’
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UN: Paris agreement climate goals ‘in great peril’
- The period from 2015-2024 will also be the warmest decade ever recorded
- Long-term global warming was currently likely to be around 1.3°C
Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine barrage
KHARKIV: Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early Tuesday, killing four people and pummelling another power plant, piling more pressure on Ukraine’s brittle energy system.
An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defense systems.
“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
“Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.
Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.
The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Daily attacks
Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.
The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 247 drones.
The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.
White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building occupied by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.
The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.
Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war.”
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
