The United Nations body is reporting that the first six months of the year has broken a number of records already with many more expected in the second half of the year.
According to WMO, during the January to June period “arctic sea ice melted very fast, another indicator of climate change. Carbon dioxide levels, which are driving global warming, have reached new highs.”
This means June 2016 became the 378th consecutive month to record temperatures above the average recorded during the last century.
“Another month, another record. And another. And another [sic]. Decades-long trends of climate change are reaching new climaxes, fuelled by the strong 2015/2016 El Nino…We face more heat waves, more extreme rainfall and potential for higher impact tropical cyclones,” Secretary-General of WMO Petteri Taalas.
The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called a meeting of leaders in September to improve upon progress made after the 2015 Paris Agreement and serve as an opportunity for countries sceptical of its goals to commit to it.
Climate change is of major concern to many developing countries and small island states because although they produced the least emissions, they suffered the negative effects the most. There is a risk of some of these islands ‘sinking’ unless concrete measures are instituted to reverse it.
Earlier this year, Ghanaians experienced unusually hot days which many attributed to the El-Nino phenomenon and global warming.
The WMO is the UN’s ‘authoritative voice on weather, climate and water.’
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