FILE - A strip of snow makes a ski slope in Saalbach, Austria, Sunday, March 17, 2024. The U.N. weather agency is sounding “a red alert” about global warming last year and beyond, citing in a new report record-smashing statistics when it comes to greenhouse gases, temperatures of land and oceans, and melting glaciers and sea-ice — even if countries, companies and citizens are getting greener.
“Topping all the bad news, what worries me the most is that the planet is now in a meltdown phase — literally and figuratively given the warming and mass loss from our polar ice sheets,” said Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, who wasn’t involved in the report.
“This list of record-smashing events is truly distressing, though not a surprise given the steady drumbeat of extreme events over the past year,” said University of Arizona climate scientist Kathy Jacobs, who also wasn’t involved in the WMO report. “The full cost of climate-change-accelerated events across sectors and regions has never been calculated in a meaningful way, but the cost to biodiversity and to the quality of life of future generations is incalculable.