UN weather agency issues ‘red alert’ on climate change after record heat, ice-melt increases in 2023

By JAMEY KEATEN and SETH BORENSTEIN
Associated Press

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. 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. It warned that the world’s efforts to reverse the trend have been inadequate. The World Meteorological Organization, in its “State of the Global Climate” report, 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 from pre-industrial levels.  U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the report “shows a planet on the brink. Fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts.”