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.”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon refused to stay implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA. The court also gave the government three weeks – till April 8 – to respond to 237 petitions challenging the law that was notified last week, days before the Lok Sabha election.

In addition, the petitioners were given leave to approach if citizenship is granted to any individual before that date; senior lawyers Kapil Sibal and Indira Jaising both made that request, as Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta (appearing for the government) said, “I am not making any statement”.

Mr Mehta had originally sought four weeks’ time to respond to the petitions.

“We will have to file a detailed affidavit, on merits, to 237 petitions. 20 interim applications are already filed and many are in the pipeline. Realistically, we need four weeks,” he told the court.

The matter was heard by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice JB Pardiwala, and Justice Manoj Misra. The petitioners included the Indian Union Muslim League (a Kerala-based political party) and also opposition leaders Jairam Ramesh of the Congress and Mahua Moitra of the Trinamool.

READ | Citizenship Act Unconstitutional? 237 Petitions Before Supreme Court

The next hearing in this case has been set for April 9.

The petitioners – who did not oppose the request for more time – have sought a pause on implementation of the “discriminatory” CAA, which they have said is against the Muslim community.

The petitioners told the court they would not oppose the government’s request for more time to study the challenges, but urged the Chief Justice-led bench to order a stay on implementation.

In 2019, after the citizenship bill was cleared by Parliament, multiple challenges were filed.

The court did not, however, pause implementation as the rules had not been notified. Last week, arguing in this matter, Mr Sibal said that situation did not apply now, since the rules are notified.

READ | “Misplaced, Misinformed, Unwarranted”: India On US’ CAA Remarks

“The problem is… notification was issued after four years. Under the law, rules have to be notified within six months. Now the problem is – if somebody gets citizenship, it will be impossible to reverse,” he said when asked by the court to respond to the government’s request for more time.

“They said (in 2019) they were not notifying rules, so no stay was granted. There is no question of ‘rejection of stay’ (in the earlier instance)… then there were no rules, so there was no stay,” he told the court, laying out his argument for a stay till the challenges to the citizenship law are settled.

“Why have they waited for four years?” he asked, referring to allegations by the Congress and other opposition parties that implementation was delayed to coincide with the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

“Let them have as much time, but don’t grant citizenship in meantime,” Indira Jaising argued.

Mr Mehta then said the fact the rules were notified before an election was irrelevant.

READ | Government Clarifies Citizenship Law Amid Opposition Attacks

Under this CAA, non-Muslim migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan fleeing religious persecution can seek citizenship. Persons from Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian communities from these three nations are eligible if they entered on or before December 31, 2014.

The opposition has slammed the government over the timing of the law’s implementation – four years after it cleared the Parliament and days before a general election. The move is “evidently designed to polarise the elections, especially in West Bengal and Assam”, Mr Ramesh had said.

Trinamool boss and Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said she doubts the law’s legality and alleged a conspiracy to “snatch citizenship rights”. “BJP leaders say CAA gives you rights. But the moment you apply for citizenship, you become illegal migrants and you will lose your rights. You will lose rights and be taken to detention camps. Please think before you apply,” she said.

The government has trashed the allegations.

READ | “Not Anti-Muslim”: Amit Shah On Opposition Attacks On CAA

Stressing the CAA is not “unconstitutional”, Home Minister Amit Shah accused the opposition of resorting to the “politics of lies”. On the timing question, he said, “BJP made it clear in its 2019 manifesto that it will bring CAA and provide Indian citizenship to refugees (from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan). BJP has a clear agenda and under that promise, the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill was passed in both houses of Parliament in 2019. It got delayed due to Covid.”

He also said minorities “need not be afraid because CAA has no provision to take back rights”.

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