Warning World Meteorological Organization Report ‘Chronicle of Climate Chaos’, Secretary-General Urges Ambitious Action to Answer Planet’s Distress Signal

Following is UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ message on the launch of the World Meteorological Organization Provisional State of the Global Climate Report 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt today:

As the twenty-seventh session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) gets underway, our planet is sending a distress signal.

The latest State of the Global Climate report is a chronicle of climate chaos.  As the World Meteorological Organization shows so clearly, change is happening with catastrophic speed — devastating lives and livelihoods on every continent.

The last eight years have been the warmest on record, making every heatwave more intense and life-threatening, especially for vulnerable populations.  Sea levels are rising at twice the speed of the 1990s — posing an existential threat for low-lying island States, and threatening billions of people in coastal regions.  Glacier melt records are themselves melting away — jeopardizing water security for whole continents.

People and communities everywhere must be protected from the immediate and ever-growing risks of the climate emergency.  That is why we are pushing so hard for universal early warning systems within five years.  We must answer the planet’s distress signal with action — ambitious, credible climate action.

COP27 must be the place — and now must be the time.