Global heat records were “smashed” last year, the UN confirmed Tuesday, with 2023 rounding out the hottest decade on record, as heatwaves stalked oceans and glaciers suffered record ice loss.

The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization issued its annual State of the Climate report, confirming preliminary data indicating that 2023 was by far the hottest year ever recorded.

And it came at the end of “the warmest 10-year period on record”, the WMO report said.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said the report showed “a planet on the brink”.

“Earth’s issuing a distress call,” he said, pointing out that “fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts”, and warning that “changes are speeding up”.

The WMO said the average near-surface temperature was 1.45 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels last year — dangerously close to the critical 1.5-degree threshold that countries agreed to avoid passing in the 2015 Paris climate accords.

“Never have we been so close… to the 1.5C lower limit of the Paris Agreement,” WMO chief Andrea Celeste Saulo warned in a statement.

– ‘Red alert’ –

The report, she said, should be seen as a “red alert to the world”.

Going through the data, the organisation found that “records were once again broken, and in some cases smashed”, warning that the numbers “gave ominous new significance to the phrase ‘off the charts’.”

Saulo stressed that climate change was about much more than temperatures.

“What we witnessed in 2023, especially with the unprecedented ocean warmth, glacier retreat and Antarctic sea ice loss, is cause for particular concern.”

One especially worrying finding was that marine heatwaves gripped nearly a third of the global ocean on an average day last year.

And by the end of 2023, more than 90 percent of the ocean had experienced heatwave conditions at some point during the year, the WMO said.

More frequent and intense marine heatwaves will have “profound negative repercussions for marine ecosystems and coral reefs”, it warned.

At the same time, it warned that key glaciers worldwide suffered the largest loss of ice ever since records began in 1950, “driven by extreme melt in both western North America and Europe”.

In Switzerland, where the WMO is headquartered, Alpine glaciers had for instance lost 10 percent of their remaining volume in the past two years alone, it said.

The Antarctic sea ice extent was also “by far the lowest on record”, WMO said.

– Rising sea levels –

In fact, it pointed out, its maximum extent at the end of the southern winter was around one million square kilometres below the previous record year — equivalent to the size of France and Germany combined.

The continued ocean warming combined with the rapidly melting glaciers and ice sheets also drove the sea level last year to its highest point since satellite records began in 1993, WMO said.

The agency stressed that the global mean sea level rise over the past decade (2014-2023) was more than double the rate in the first decade of satellite records.

It highlighted that the dramatic climate shifts are taking a heavy toll on people worldwide, fuelling extreme weather events, flooding and drought, which trigger displacement and drive up biodiversity loss and food insecurity.

“The climate crisis is THE defining challenge that humanity faces and is closely intertwined with the inequality crisis,” Saulo said.

– ‘Glimmer of hope’ –

The number of people who are considered acutely food insecure around the world has more than doubled, from 149 million people prior to the Covid-19 pandemic to 333 million at the end of 2023, WMO pointed out.

The UN’s weather and climate agency did however highlight one “glimmer of hope”: surging renewable energy generation.

Last year, renewable energy generation capacity — mainly from solar, wind and hydropower — increased by nearly 50 percent from 2022, it said.

Guterres also emphasised that there was an upside to the findings.

The world, he insisted, still has a chance to keep the planet’s long-term temperature rise below the 1.5C threshold and “avoid the worst of climate chaos”.

“We know how to do it.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The political split in the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha’s (JMM) first family is out in the open as party founder Shibu Soren’s daughter-in-law Sita Soren switched to the BJP today, accusing the JMM leadership of neglecting her. This coincides with the other bahu in the family, Hemant Soren’s wife Kalpana, emerging as the party’s voice as it gears up for the Lok Sabha polls.

On January 31, amid speculation that Hemant Soren could make way for wife Kalpana to take over as Chief Minister if the Enforcement Directorate (ED) moved to arrest him, his sister-in-law and three-time MLA Sita had said Kalpana has “no political experience”.

Days later, Champai Soren, a trusted aide of the JMM first family, took over as Jharkhand Chief Minister. A month later, the party chose Kalpana Soren to address the mega INDIA rally in Mumbai that marked the end of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra this Sunday.

Sharing stage with heavyweight leaders such as Rahul Gandhi, Uddhav Thackeray and Tejashwi Yadav, the 48-year-old delivered a confident speech, urging voters to rise against a “dictatorial power”. “In Maharashtra, people were bought to topple the government. But in Jharkhand, MLAs of the alliance showed that power that it cannot shake our government. A conspiracy was hatched to put my husband in jail. In the coming days, many other names will come up. I want to tell those dictatorial forces, INDIA will not bow down.”

She also thanked Rahul Gandhi for starting his yatra from Manipur. “He chose Manipur when it was burning. I am saying this as a tribal. At that time, there was no one to take note of Manipur. Even today, the Centre and the state government are silent.”

Kalpana Soren, who holds engineering and MBA degrees, had largely stayed away from political limelight before her husband Hemant Soren was arrested in a money laundering case. The former Jharkhand Chief Minister has denied the allegations against him and has accused the ruling BJP at the Centre of political vendetta.

In the days before Hemant Soren’s arrest, there was speculation that Kalpana Soren may take his place. But later, Champai Soren’s name emerged. The BJP had then claimed that a majority of JMM legislators were against Kalpana Soren’s elevation as Chief Minister.

Following his arrest, Kalpana Soren started managing Hemant Soren’s Twitter handle and articulating the party’s position in public meetings. The party, it is evident, wants to play the public sympathy card in the upcoming polls by making her the face of its campaign. The JMM is yet to name its candidates for Lok Sabha polls, and Kalpana Soren is being seen as a probable.

Meanwhile, Sita Soren has pulled the plug. Two days after her sister-in-law’s speech at the Mumbai rally, she quit as MLA, resigned from JMM and joined the BJP. In her resignation letter addressed to party chief and her father-in-law Shibu Soren, she mentioned that her husband and Hemant Soren’s elder brother, late Durga Soren, played an active role in the Jharkhand statehood movement.

She said since his death, she and her family had been neglected. “Members of the party and the family distanced us and this has been very painful,” she wrote, adding that JMM had changed and was now controlled by people whose values don’t match with hers. She also alleged a conspiracy against her. “I served the party for 14 years, but to date, I have not received the respect that I should have,” the three-time MLA from Jharkhand’s Jama said.

Speaking to NDTV after joining BJP, she said, “The party gave me no portfolio, but I walked along. But this cannot go on. And I believe lotus will bloom on all 14 seats of Jharkhand. Despite being loyal to the party, I could not work freely.” Asked if she had raised her concerns with the JMM leadership and Hemant Soren, she said, “I raised it multiple times, but he would only give assurances and do nothing.” Sita Soren termed Champai Soren, the new Chief Minister, a “rubber stamp”.

The JMM has termed the big exit as “unfortunate”. Party leader Manoj Pandey said Sita Soren was considered an important member of the party. “The kind of respect she has received from this party, I don’t think she will get anywhere else. If she comes under the influence of people opposing us, she will sabotage herself.”