The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) last month published its  State of the Climate Report 2023 , which not only confirms the concerns of most observers that global warming has reached alarming levels, but also offers ample evidence that climate change and its accompanying impacts are progressing much faster than originally thought.

RECORD YEAR

The WMO report shows that “2023 broke every single climate indicator.” The global average temperature in 2023 was 1.45°C ± 0.12°C above the industrial era average from 1850-1900. Readers will note that this is dangerously close to the 1.5°C temperature increase limit set in the Paris Agreement (PA) and reiterated in several subsequent scientific reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), beyond which climate change could reach dangerous and possibly irreversible levels. (D Raghunandan, more on newsclick.in)