Many climate change indicators flashed red last year, says report

Aerial view of a suburban area that has burned the ground in the wild. — The devastation caused by the January wildfires in California was photographed in Pacific Palisades, California, on 15 March. Rising average global temperatures increase the risk of wildfires.

According to the WMO report, the consequences of climate change will be irreversible in some places over hundreds or even thousands of years.

Signs of human-induced climate change were increasingly visible around the globe last year as some records were broken. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says so in a recent statistical report. In some places, the consequences are irreversible over hundreds or even thousands of years.

Among other things, the report confirms a previously reported finding that last year was the warmest in the 175-year history of measurements. It was probably the first year in which the average global temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times.

The last ten years have been the ten warmest years on record for the planet. The record for global seawater temperatures has been broken for eight consecutive years in a row.