PARIS, France -- Climate change poses an "existential threat" to life on Earth, prominent scientists warned Tuesday, in an assessment on this year's avalanche of heat records and weather extremes that they said are hitting more ferociously than expected.
"We must shift our perspective on the climate emergency from being just an isolated environmental issue to a systemic, existential threat," the authors said. Co-author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said recorded sea surface temperatures "go completely off the chart" and scientists are not yet able to fully explain why.
In Canada, record wildfires partly related to climate change released more carbon dioxide than the country's total 2021 greenhouse gas emissions, the report said.Before 2023, days with global average temperatures more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels were a rarity, the authors said. This year had already registered 38 such days by mid-September.
With some tipping points "we're not going to avoid them now, it's more about slowing the damage", said co-author Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of ExeterEvery fraction of a degree matters, Lenton told AFP: "There's still a lot to play for."