Climate change impacts are "heading into uncharted territories of destruction", UN secretary-general António Guterres has warned following the release of a multi-agency scientific report reviewing the latest research.
The report, led by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), warns the world is "going in the wrong direction" on climate change.
With greenhouse gas concentrations continuing to increase in the atmosphere and world leaders failing to adopt strategies to hold warming below 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures, the Earth is inching closer towards dangerous climate tipping points, the 'United in Science' report says.
The report also notes that global fossil CO2 emissions returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2021, following the drop prompted by worldwide Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020.
Already, extreme weather events are more frequent and more intense, the report warns, referencing earlier research by the WMO in 2021 which found the preceding seven years (2015-2021) were the warmest on record.
"Looking forward, the Met Office (UK), in partnership with the World Climate Research Programme, found that there is a 48 per cent chance that, during at least one year in the next five years, annual mean temperature will temporarily be 1.5 °C higher than in 1850-1900," the report says.
"Additionally, there is a 93 per cent chance that at least one year in the same time period will be the hottest on record."
The WMO adds that "enhances mitigation action is needed to prevent the goals of the Paris Agreement from slipping out of reach".
In the report's foreword, Mr Guterres states: "Rapidly accelerating climate disruption means that no one is safe from disasters such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, extreme storms, wildfires or sea level rise.
"The answer lies in urgent climate action, yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addition and to compromise the livelihoods of future generations."
Mr Guterres also calls on world leaders "to heed the facts" laid out in the report, and to "unite behind the science and to take ambitious urgent climate action". -Additional reporting by Reuters
