The United Nations Office at Geneva
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WMO - Press Conference - 15 November 2023
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1:01:38
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MP4
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3.6 GB
STORY: Greenhouse Gas Bulletin report - WMO
TRT: 2:58”
SOURCE: UNTV CH
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
ASPECT RATIO: 16:9
DATELINE: 15 November 2023 - GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
SHOTLIST
- Exterior medium shot: UN building with UN flag, UN Geneva.
- Wide shot, press briefing room with journalists, speakers and screens, UN Geneva
- SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH) – Prof Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General: “We have again broken less comfortable records in main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. And for example, now we have 150 per cent more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we had during the pre-industrial times.”
- Cutaway: Medium shot, podium and speakers, UN Geneva
- SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH) – Prof Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General: “The warming impact of those gases and you can see that the carbon dioxide is responsible for two thirds of the warming methane with less than 20 per cent, nitrous oxide 6 per cent, and the ozone depleting gases that we have seen luckily drop in the emissions. They are all together responsible for 11 per cent of the warming potential.”
- Cutaway: Close up, journalist listening, UN Geneva
- SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH) – Prof Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General: “The lifetime of these gases is so long that they are distributed equally worldwide. So what is emitted in China doesn't stay in China, but it's seen in some months it's equally distributed worldwide:”
- Cutaway: Wide shot, press briefing room with journalists, speakers and screens, UN Geneva
- SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH) Prof Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General: “The impacts of climate change, they are different in different parts of the world. Here in Europe, we have seen an increase of heatwaves, we have seen a dramatic increase in the melting of glaciers and depending on year, we have seen increase of both droughts and flooding.”
- Cutaway: Close up, technician listening, UN Geneva
- SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH) – Prof Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General: “Climate change is not only temperature issue, but it's wider change in our behavior of atmosphere and we have already seen practically the whole planet has seen an increase of heatwaves. About half of the planet has been facing an increase of flooding events and one third of the planet has been facing an increase of drought events and these negative trends will continue until 2060.”
- Cutaway: Close up, journalist listening, UN Geneva
- SOUNDBITE (ENGLISH) – Prof Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General: “This year will be the warmest year on record. We will publish the report at the COP 28 in a couple of weeks. But, so far, it looks like we will we reach the all-time high because we have just switched from La Nina to the El Nino year, and besides the normal high temperatures in Pacific, we have also seen very high temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean, which is unusual.”
- Cutaway: Medium shot, podium and speakers, UN Geneva
- Cutaway: Close up, journalist listening, UN Geneva
- Cutaway: Close up, technician listening, UN Geneva
Record high concentration of greenhouse gas will lead to further temperature increase: WMO
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new record high last year and carbon dioxide (CO2) levels were a full 50 per cent above the pre-industrial era for the first time last year, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday.
There is “no end in sight” to the rising trend, WMO chief Petteri Taalas said at the launch of the agency’s annual greenhouse gas bulletin report.
“We have again broken less comfortable records in main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide,” said Professor Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General at the report launch in Geneva. “Now we have 150 per cent more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we had during the pre-industrial times.”
This will mean further temperature increases and more heatwaves, extreme rainfall, glacier melt and sea-level rise, with disastrous consequences for people and planet, WMO said.
“The warming impact of those gases, and you can see that the carbon dioxide is responsible for two-thirds of the warming methane with less than 20 per cent, nitrous oxide, six per cent. They are all together responsible for 11 per cent of the warming potential,” said Professor Taalas.
The UN agency said earlier this month that 2023 will almost certainly be the hottest year on record.
“It looks like we will we reach the all-time high because we have just switched from La Niña to the El Niño year, and besides the normal high temperatures in Pacific, we have also seen very high temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean, which is unusual,” informed WMO’s Secretary-General.
Given the long lifetime of CO2, WMO warned that the temperature level already observed “will persist for several decades even if emissions are rapidly reduced to net zero”.
“The lifetime of these gases is so long that they are distributed equally worldwide. So, what is emitted in China doesn't stay in China, but it's seen in some months it's equally distributed worldwide,” said Professor Taalas.
Climate change impacts include more extreme weather and sea level rise, the WMO top official continued.
“Climate change is not only a temperature issue, but it's a wider change in our behavior of atmosphere and we have already seen practically the whole planet has seen an increase of heatwaves”, he said. “About half of the planet has been facing an increase of flooding events and one third of the planet has been facing an increase of drought events and these negative trends will continue until 2060.”
WMO reiterated calls to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and Professor Taalas said that he was encouraged by the rise in the use of renewable energy worldwide.
-ends-
Teleprompter
Good morning dear media representatives.
Bonjour with Ms Missouri represent on La Presse.
The World Meteorological Organisation is releasing today it's Greenhouse gas bulletin.
It presents the state of greenhouse gases globally for the year 2022.
It shows record levels of heat tripping gases, which means further temperature increase.
Today we have with us Professor Petri Tallas, Secretary General of WMO and Dr Oksana Tarasova, responsible for the production of the greenhouse gas billeting and senior scientific officer.
Professor Tallas, can you tell me, tell us the context of this report, please?
Thank you, Bridget, and thanks for coming to this event.
And I'm trying to improve the gender balance of this audience today.
[Other language spoken]
Thanks for coming anyhow.
So we have shown in the report that we have again breaking broken less comfortable records in main main greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
And, and then for example, now we have 150% more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than than we had during the pre industrial times.
And out of those most important gas is carbon dioxide.
It has contributed about 2/3 of the of the, of the warming potential and the methane is a little bit less than 20% in its warming potential.
And the nitrous oxide which is the third gas that is reported, it has been responsible for 6% of of, of, of the, of the warming potential.
And the, they're also depleting gases where we have seen luckily decrease of the, of the emissions they are responsible for about 11% altogether.
And, and why carbon dioxide is so important.
It's lifetime is up to thousands of years.
So it takes thousands of years to remove carbon from the, from the system once it's emitted to the atmosphere.
The lifetime of methane is 11 years and and the lifetime of nitrous oxide is a little bit more than 100 years.
So, so this carbon, carbon problem is the is the biggest problem and, and, and so, so far we have 150% more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than pre national times, 264% more methane and 124% more nitrous oxide.
And this information that we are publishing today is based on 100 to 150 stations worldwide.
And we have also measurements from the Pacific Ocean which have been carried out with ships.
In the report, we are showing that there have been 4 events during the past decades when we have seen drops in the emissions of of carbon.
We had in the 70s oil crises which led to temporary decrease of emissions.
In the 90s when Soviet Union was collapsing, there was decrease of the, of the industrial activities in the, in, the in, in, in that region.
And there was a drop.
And in 2008, we had the financial crisis and again we saw a drop.
And most recent one was during the COVID lockdowns, 2020 especially.
But since the lifetime of carbon dioxide is so long, this, this short term anomalies didn't change the big, big picture.
And we have also started paying more attention to the fluxes of those gases, how much they are emitted and how much they are taken by vegetation, especially forests and, and, and farm lands.
And, and we have seen that that for example, the heat waves that we have had here in Europe have decreased the the intake of vegetation of, of, of carbon, carbon dioxide.
Our understanding of the, of the, of the so-called budgets of especially carbon dioxide and methiate have some limitations.
We don't fully understand the the, the role of vegetation for carbon dioxide budgets, both the source and sinks and and we we don't fully understand why the methane concentrations are are are steadily growing.
And that's why WMO has a new initiative called Global Greenhouse Gas Watch.
It's our Congress, there are 193 members make decisions.
They were endorsing such concept where we use ground based stations, satellite information and assimilation modelling tools to get the daily information on the strengths of sources and sinks of those three main gases and also also annual reports on on those.
And that's also one of our proposals for the forthcoming COP 28, that we, we could have better understanding of the behaviour of those gases and what, what, what this means that we have such **** concentrations of especially carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
It means that, that we have studied increase of the melting of the glaciers.
For example, here in Switzerland, the Swiss glaciers lost the more, more than 10% of the mass in the past 2 summers.
And, and, and we know from the history when we have a, we're having similar concentrations of carbon dioxide at the sea level was 10 to 20 metres higher than today.
So gradually the mounting glaciers will disappear mostly by the end of this century.
And then we will have Greenland and, and Antarctic glacier left and, and they're going to melt for up to thousands of years.
And the conservative estimated that that will contribute half metre to 1 metre per century sea level rise.
So this carbon dioxide concentration today is a problem for, for this, for, for the cryosphere.
We could still phase out this negative trend in weather patterns, heat waves, flooding, drought, tropical storms, if we are able to limit the, the, the emissions to the limits of Paris agreement.
[Other language spoken]
So there's need for raise of ambition.
That's in a nutshell the contents of the report.
[Other language spoken]
Now I will show you some slides to, to, to prove that I, I was not lying so that that the facts with this can show it with the facts.
So, so this, it's clear that these greenhouse gases, they are contributing to the temperature increase and, and they're contributing to the climate change, which means changes in prehibitation patterns and, and also this cryospheric problem that I was, I was reporting about.
And when it comes to Paris agreement, the limits, we are soon going to reach such a level that we are, we are having, having more carbon in the atmosphere that is needed to reach the Paris limits, especially 1.5 is, is going to be achieved fairly fairly soon.
And, and, and this climate change is not only temperature issue, but it's, it's wider change in our, our, our behaviour of atmosphere.
And, and we have already seen practically the whole planet has seen an increase of heat waves.
About half of the planet has been facing an increase of flooding events and 1/3 of the planet has been facing an increase of drought events.
And this negative trend will continue until 2000 and 60s next, please.
And here are the numbers.
So we have now 150% more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we used to have during the pre industrial times, 264% more methane and 124% more than nitrous oxide.
And and and we have seen fairly strong growth of both methane and nitrous oxide concentrations last year.
[Other language spoken]
And this is demonstrating what is the warming impact of those gases.
And you can see that the carbon dioxide is responsible for 2/3 of the of the of the warming methane a bit less than 20%, nitrous oxide 6% and also depleting gases that we have seen luckily drop into emissions.
They are altogether responsible for 11% of the of the warming warming potential.
And here are the fractions of, of, of the warming potential since for the past, past decades.
And you can see that this light blue area, which is carbon dioxide, its, its role is dominant and it has been, it has been growing.
There has been also a slight increase in the methane contribution and, and also nitrous oxide contribution and, and slight decrease of the of the yellow, which is CFC gases.
[Other language spoken]
And here you can see the time series for the past decades, very steady increase of the of the concentrations of all gases, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
And during the past years we have seen fairly strong increases of methane concentrations and, and there has been also a steady increase of the nitrous oxide oxide concentrations.
And this is, this is the network of stations where we have from 100 to 150 stations.
So these red dots and, and in the Pacific, we have had also vessel campaigns to measure, measure carbon dioxide concentrations.
And then I said that they have, they have, we have, we had 4 episodes during the past decades when we have seen a decrease of the emissions oil crisis first, thereafter collapse of Soviet Union, thereafter this financial crisis and, and finally COVID, COVID lockdowns.
But but despite of that, you can see that that the the the concentrations have been have been growing and this is very much because of very long lifetime of of carbon dioxide.
So this kind of resort animal is in emissions don't change the big picture.
And, and, and here is a demonstration that that last summer, summer 22, there was a decrease of the, of the, of the, of the, of the natural sinks of, of carbon dioxide.
And, and this this drought and the heat wave was, was decreasing the strength of the of the sink of, of carbon dioxide.
And thereafter in in autumn and we had again more or less normal temperatures than the sinks were much stronger.
[Other language spoken]
And then this Global Greenhouse Gas Watch, we have to better understand the both the sources and sinks of those 3 gases.
And that's why we have this proposal for Global Greenhouse Gas Watch, which is our, our supreme body Congress, ORI endorsed last May.
And we are seeking for support of the forthcoming COP 28 for this concept.
And the the challenge is that we have limitations in our understanding of the role of vegetation in, in, in carbon budget.
And we have also limited understanding of the sources of methane to the atmosphere.
And by having these new means, we could, we could provide better information for decision makers and for the scientific community on, on what's happening in real, real atmosphere.
[Other language spoken]
And this is the concert where we are using ground based stations, satellite measurements and, and modelling tools to, to, to estimate better reports on behaviour of those those gases.
That's all.
I hope that you are now confident that what I said first is based on facts.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much, Professor Tallas.
Now we can open the floor to questions.
And Doctor Oksana Tarasova, who was responsible for the production of this greenhouse gas billeting, will also be taking questions.
So please, the floor is yours in the room.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Professor Tallas, please can you give us some good news?
Is there any light at the end of any tunnel in this?
So we've just heard today that President Xi and President Biden have met, met in the West Coast of the United States and they have agreed to collaborate in the field of, of climate.
[Other language spoken]
And actually, if you recall, what happened in Paris in 2015 was that we were able to sign this Paris agreement because there was a common understanding of China, USA and Europe.
And, and, and now it's important that that those big emitters, biggest emitters, China and the USA are, are, are, are, are supporting further ambition level of climate, climate mitigation.
[Other language spoken]
And the other good news is that that that we have started using more and more renewable and climate friendly sources of energy worldwide.
Of course in Europe we have been drivers of such evolution, but but also other parts of the world are are using more and more climate friendly sources of energy and, and also this booming electric vehicles.
Is, is, is a promising 1 and and, and the International Energy Agency has published their most recent report and where there there was a slightly optimistic labour.
But what matters is, is what happens in the real atmosphere.
And in the real atmosphere we haven't seen, we haven't seen any any positive signs so far.
Please yes Catherine Fiona Combo Conga France fan, Catra Professor, could you be a bit more precise about the impact of greenhouses gas, Greece house gas on regions?
That would be interesting to know what's.
[Other language spoken]
Africa, for instance, or in Asia and also what do you expect from that global atmosphere?
Watch How is it going to support the study of the atmosphere?
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
So first of all, first I would like to say that the lifetime of these gases is so long that they are distributed equally worldwide.
So, so, so that there's So what is emitted in China doesn't stay in China, but it's, it's, it's, it's in, in, in some months.
It's equally distributed worldwide.
And of course the impacts of climate change, they are different in different parts of the world.
Here in Europe, we have seen an increase of heat waves.
We have seen a dramatic increase in the melting of glaciers and, and, and depending on the year, we have seen increase of both droughts and flooding.
So for example, last two summers were were very dry here, here in Europe and, and, and, and three years ago we had this this very severe flooding event in in Germany.
So, so we are Western Europe is exposed to both, both of them, but, but some parts of Africa, for example, have been facing, and actually the whole Mediterranean region has been facing increase of, of droughts.
And so is the case for Middle East and, and for example, China has been exposed to both flooding and drought events.
So, so that's, that's, that's the case.
And, and, and especially this Eurasian continent has been, has been an area where we have seen increase of flooding, flooding events and heat waves have been increase of heat waves have been observed worldwide.
So that's excluding southern tip of of South America.
And of course this melting of laziers is having big impacts on availability of freshwater in, in main rivers in Asia, in Europe, in, in South America and North America.
And once these glaciers are are melting, we we are getting less and less water for for human beings, for agriculture and and also for industry and, and in some cases they also means of transportation.
Doctor Tasova, do you want to add anything also on greenhouse gas watch?
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much.
As Professor Thomas said, the problem with the greenhouse gases is that they accumulate in the atmosphere.
So basically, for example, in the case of carbon dioxide, what we observed this year is not just what we do this year or what we've done the year before.
That's a whole history of human emissions since 1750.
But nevertheless, we do have some small, very small geographical gradients.
And we will use those small geographical gradients in the global greenhouse gas watch system to actually look at the distribution of the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases worldwide.
And those geographical gradients are to exist because we have the tropical regions which are usually the sources of methane and sources of Nitin, nature's oxide, when it comes to the natural emissions, because we have a lot of wetlands.
But at the same time, in tropics you also have a lot of tropical forest which serve as a main region where you have the uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere.
And out of the whole human emissions which were produced every year, about 40 gigaton of CO2, about 25% is taken up by the ocean and that causes the ocean acidification.
And let's say about 30% is taken up by the ocean by by the terrestrial biosphere.
So the forests are taking up that amount and that actually helps us to get the impact on climate which is driven by about 50% of what we need.
So in the future climate, it's very important to understand how those.
Sinks will behave because if we have a reduced uptake by the ocean and if we have the reduced uptake by the forest, then everything will stay in the atmosphere and then the impact will be much stronger on climate.
[Other language spoken]
So at that, that, that the, that the climate negotiations, we are very much relying on the information that we get from the countries, how they report their, the consumption of fossil fuels and, and, and so forth.
And by having this global greenhouse gas, what's we could see what's happening in, in real, real terms.
And, and, and one of the big questions, for example, is what's happening with the Amazonian rainforest, the way we have deforestation going on.
And some of the most recent scientific studies have shown that large parts of Amazonia has become source of carbon instead of zinc.
It used to be a major sink of, of, of carbon in the past, but, but now it has become also source of carbon.
And we have changed the local climate by by cutting the trees, it has become drier.
And, and this is, this is one of the matters of concern and, and we could follow, follow such processes.
And we could have also a better understanding on the, on the role of human beings in this, this methane emissions, how much is coming from cattle, how much is coming from rice paddies and how much is coming from the, from the tropical wetlands, which, which also one of the natural sources of that.
So that would be if, if we would have, once we have such a system in operational phase, we could give much better information for the climate negotiators, so negotiators, they better understand the wider picture of of of those those gases and their behaviour.
[Other language spoken]
Reuters Professor Tallas, you said that about half of the planet has been facing the increase of flooding events and 1/3 of the planet has been facing an increase in drought events.
And the negative trend is supposed to continue into until 2000 sixties.
Is that because the monitoring ends by 2000 sixties or is that because we don't have enough data to know what would happen beyond that?
Just wanted to clarify that.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
So, so the the challenge is that there's certain inertia in the system.
So, so once we change the we have all re emitted so much so those gases that the negative trend won't be seized out next year.
So, so, but there's still a chance to, to, to limit this, seize this negative trend in 2000 and 60s and, and, and of course we have to reduce our emissions failed radically.
If, if, if, if it would reach the especially 1.5° limit.
And, and with the models we can simulate this.
There's not the problem in our scientific understanding of this kind of average climate change.
So that's that's the I would say normal business for the climate modelling community to estimate what's going to happen during the coming 100 years and the voters have been happening so far.
So that that's such simulations exist.
But where we have limitations with the modelling at the moment is our understanding of the weather extremes.
So those are not very well described with the current models.
And that's why we are promoting a new way of going to ****, very **** resolution, horizontal resolution of climate models so that we would be able to say more about the weather extremes and actually the impacts of climate change.
They are very much fell through the extremes rather than these average, average changes.
And there's no return back to the last century's milder climate.
So that's also one of the one of the facts that we we already know.
So, so this because of the very long lifetime of of carbon dioxide, unless we create the means to remove massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
So far we don't, we don't have such means besides of course vegetation where where we also have limitations.
We can never, we can never, absorb such amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that we are emitting by using fossil fuels.
So we have Jeremy launch with question only.
Yes, Roku, I will ask it in English if it's OK.
I, I think you mentioned in the report that El Nino will probably have an impact on the, the, the capacity of the ecosystem and, and, and and the sea to absorb those emissions.
I would like you to elaborate a bit more on that.
Does it mean technically that?
[Other language spoken]
Anaemia, Anaemia was was was more was more prone to absorb the emission and that with El Nino it is a fact that the oceans will have less capacity to absorb those carbon dioxide emissions.
Doctor Tahasova, thank you very much.
So when we talk about the impact of El Nino, there are several factors that that impact that have an impact on the biosphere.
And the first one is that you have a very low precipitation in the tropical areas where you have a lot of forest and then there is no precipitation usually the forest stop absorbing CO2.
And that actually has been demonstrated by the drought in Europe in 2022, which we refer in the bulletin in which Professor Tallis already addressed to you, where the drought for the three months reduce the uptake of the forest just over Europe, Central European continent by 60 teragrams of carbon, which is a substantial number.
If you put it in the in the context of global emission that would be proportional to about 1% decrease of the uptake of the emissions of the whole globe.
So when we when we have El Nino, then this whole drought will happen over tropical areas where you will have increased episodes of the biomass burning which will directly meets you to in the atmosphere.
But also you will have the reduced uptake similar to as we observed in Europe in 2022, but in much larger areas, which means that there will be much more CO2 which stays in the atmosphere.
And we may observe in 2023, which is when we have this linear phenomena much larger increase in the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
If we, if we look at the posting linear events are as we refer in the bulletin, you can see on, on the, on the plot, which is a figure number and #5 you can see that there are two years when we had substantial El Nino in 2016 and in 1998.
You can see that in 2016 the growth rate of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 3.3 PPM, which is a substantially larger as like 50% larger of the annual increase which were observed in 2022 when we had La Nino phenomena and a substantial uptake of CO2 by the biosphere.
[Other language spoken]
But of course, we, we know that also these L linear years, they're, they're, they're much warmer years than the land linear years.
And, and the last strong L linear year was 2016.
And, and, and this year we have been breaking the global temperature records month by month.
And, and it's practically sure that this year will be the warmest year on, on record.
We will publish the report, the COP 28 in couple of weeks.
But, but so far it looks like we will, we will reach the all time **** because we, we, we, we have just switched from Plan India to a linear year and, and besides the normal **** temperatures in Pacific, we have also seen very **** temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean, which is unusual.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
First of all, I noticed on the map regarding the stations that are monitoring the, the emissions, the greenhouse gases, that there are gaps, geographic gaps.
And most notably in in South America, there are very few of these stations, notably in areas where you have, you know, huge emissions problems, pollution, you know, from, from traffic and so forth.
So just wanted to understand, you know, whether this has an impact on the readings.
And then I wanted to to know from from you, professor, tell us about how important you.
[Other language spoken]
A decision at the COP of a an early phase out of fossil fuels is and how hopeful you may be of that.
[Other language spoken]
So of course, we have fairly dense network of stations in, in, in Europe, in Japan and most parts of North America and, and, and, and this global greenhouse gas, what's initiative that we have, we are promoting there.
We are using both ground based stations and satellites for, for, for this monitoring.
And with satellites we can get global coverage.
We have satellite programmes in orbit by United States, by China and Japan at the at the moment.
And, and that's, that's the desire that we would have better understanding of the also of the, of the, of the regions on, on these.
So there, there are some limitations, but, but, but since the lifetime of those gases is so, so long, we are more or less measuring the same, same, same thing.
Of course we have this regional and, and regional variations in emissions, which are also very much related to seasons.
Typically the winter season has higher emissions and, and the things are weaker during that season and, and, and, and during the summer season it's the opposite situation.
So I think it'd be able to provide fairly good big picture of the average seas.
But if you want to dig to the details of, of emissions from big cities and so forth, then we have have limitations with the current means and that's why we have this global greenhouse gas.
What's what's initiative, as I said already in my intervention, this emission level of of that we're having today means that we are fairly soon going to reach emissions that mean that that we have challenges in, in keeping the warming at the 1.5° limit.
There's still some hope for that, but but to reach that, we should really strengthen our ambition level, raise our ambition level and, and, and, and, and besides the G7 countries and European Union countries, it should happen happen also in, in BRICS countries.
We know that about 1/3 of the emissions are coming from G7 and European Union countries and altogether 80% of the emissions are coming from G20 countries.
And and this remaining part of G20 countries is, is a critical thing and, and how quickly they can they can reduce their emissions.
Let's hope that this enhanced potential of US China cooperation will lead to concrete, concrete results.
And, but at the moment it's, it's, it's going to be quite difficult to keep it at the 1.5° limit.
We're heading towards 2.5 to 3° at the moment, but but there's still some hope that we would see nicer numbers in the future.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
Professor Tallis, in your press statement, you said that despite decades of warnings and climate summits, we're still heading in the wrong direction.
Are you concerned that the forthcoming top might be another one of those summits where countries don't heed the warnings?
And secondly, if you could say a bit more about the tipping points that are mentioned in the bulletin, these moments where everything might rapidly begin to go downhill and.
There'll be very little that we could do about.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
So during my scientific career, it started in mid 80s.
[Other language spoken]
We, we started publishing the IPCC reports in 1990 and first, first there was no, no reaction to those reports.
And 10 years later there were attacks against, against science and, and, and so-called climate sceptics were quite visible.
But what has been happening during the past 10 years is that the heads of state and governments have realised that we have a challenge called climate change and, and, and, and also the, the private sector and the engineering community has been able to provide us better means for well, for being successful in climate mitigation.
The prices of solar energy, wind, NHC batteries, electric vehicles have been dropping.
So we have now better means to be successful in climate mitigation.
So it's not totally desperate the situation, but so far we haven't seen the, seen the, the, the right, right, right, right that level of emissions yet.
We have seen two very successful cop meetings.
Of course, Paris in 2015 was, was a great success since we were able to sign an agreement and there was a common understanding especially in USA, China and Europe how to, how to proceed.
And of course we got support by by the rest of the world and, and, and also the Glasgow Corp was partly successful one.
It was a reflection to the IPCC 1.5° report, which was demonstrating that we should move our, our target from 2° to 1.5.
And the G7 and Europe, G7 countries and European Union made such commitments and, and many countries that didn't have any commitments before that they made commitments.
So even even China and India made some, some commitments not to keep us yet on, on 1.5° track and, and, and the forthcoming COP, we will see what happens there.
But, but this fact that USA and and China have have started interacting is, is, is is a positive sign because those big players, they can change the change the change the, the big scene.
We will see the we will see the results in, in, in coming weeks.
Concerning tipping points, we have of course in scientific literature we have description of several tipping points and some of them are based on, on, on risk analysis and they're not based on climate modelling results.
And, and I was just opening IPCC Bureau here in Geneva this morning and, and they are going to make a proposal what kind of special reports IPCC will publish during the coming, coming years.
And one of the proposals is, is that there would be a dedicated report on, on tipping points.
How, how realistic they are, how much they are some sort of extreme risk analysis and how much they are, they are realistic.
But for example, what has been happening to the Amazonian rainforest and, and, and Amazonas sink of carbon.
That's one tipping point that seems to be realising.
And also we have studied seeing melting of the Antarctic glaciers, at least those ones are, are fairly, fairly visible.
And we have also seen a slowing down of so-called carfream, which is bringing warm water from Caribbean towards, towards Europe that those, those are already in place.
But so far we haven't seen major emissions of carbon dioxide or methane coming from the from the Arctic area where the permafrost is melting.
This is also one, one thing that should be followed, but there's clearly a need for more scientific information on those.
And, and, and it's it's possible that IPCC will have a dedicated special report on those.
[Other language spoken]
Yes, thank you for taking, for taking my question.
This question is to Mr Talas.
You mentioned that the Amazon rainforest was a carbon sinker and now it is a source of carbon dioxide dioxide emission emissions.
What is the methodology that you have used to measure that and when when it was first noted?
Yeah, this was one of the tipping points that had been mentioned.
And, and, and it has been shown that this deforestation may lead to also change of the local, local climate.
Typically we have lots of humidity in the in the rainforest areas.
And once we have less vegetation, that means that we we don't have so much humidity anymore.
And, and there have been some dedicated studies by having so-called flux measurements and aircraft measurements in the, in the Amazonian area where they have been studying what's what's happened, what has been happening to the carbon intake of the, of the forest.
And, and it's, it's, it's clearly shown that the intake is nowadays much weaker than it used to be as compared to some, some years ago.
And this is of course, one, one of the tipping points and, and, and, and, and that's one of the biggest forest, forest problems that we are having worldwide, this deforestation of Amazonia region and also Central Asian, African region and, and some, some South Asian regions have been facing, facing the same.
And and that's that's of course bad news when it comes to carbon budget.
[Other language spoken]
Good morning and good morning to you, Doctor Tallis.
I have question specifically about Africa.
We're seeing historic droughts and floods in a number of places there and it seems to me that the continent is at the mercy of what the rich developing big emitters of the world are doing.
So what I would like to know is what actions can countries that are victims of the worst impacts of climate change do in order to mitigate the situation?
Or is this, I mean, you know, Biden and XI, good luck to them and.
The rest of the world.
But it does it really depend upon that.
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
So Africa has been facing amazing changes in the prehibitation patterns and, and, and in the long, long run, both the Mediterranean region, including the northern Africa has become drier and and and and warmer and, and so is the scenario and, and evolution in southern part of of Africa.
But then we have seen also this flooding and, and, and drought, the variation in Eastern Africa, for example.
And, and during the last, last year, we, we have seen very dramatic drought in Horn of Africa in, in Somalia, in, in Ethiopia and, and parts of parts of Kenya.
And that was partly boosted by, by the Laninia impact.
So now we are in El El in your face and, and we have started seeing also rainfall there and and, and and and the forthcoming COP meetings, there will be more emphasis on climate adaptation.
We already had the Salma Sake COP a year ago and and there was growing attention to climate adaptation because of this.
This negative trend will continue for the coming decades anyhow.
And the desire of less developed countries is that the half of the climate financing should go to climate addition.
And from our side, one of the powerful ways to adapt to climate sense is to improve the early warning services, weather services, hydrological services and climate services.
And and that's that's what we are, we are promoting.
And by having, if he if he would have better early warning services for the coming weeks, coming months and, and this Elineola linear case even for the coming coming half year, we could optimise, for example, the agricultural activities and use of water, water resources and, and, and of course Africa is is is is a victim, but Africa is also has been responsible for deforestation.
So if you take this deforestation into account, for example, Latin America has caused fairly big emissions by cutting their their forests and, and, and that's also the case in in large parts of Africa and, and many African countries have national adaptation plans.
And, and for example, in countries like Ethiopia and Kenya, they have studied using irrigation to boost their agriculture.
And, and that's one way to adapt to climate change.
We cannot fully avoid the losses caused by climate change, but, but there are, there are various means for that.
And, and, and, and as I said, the desire is that the half of the climate financing Sudan could go to the climate, climate adaptation, besides mitigation, which is of course very critical.
[Other language spoken]
Thank you very much again.
My question is related of how much of the WMO activities are happening in South America.
Do you have offices, stations in the continent?
And the second part of the question is how much of the WMO budget has been allocated to the region, in which countries?
Third part of the questions which countries are the biggest donors from the and overall?
[Other language spoken]
So WMO is is a global organisation and we are we are fairly small organisation.
We have most of our staff members here in in Geneva, but we have also regional offices in Latin America.
Our America's office is located in Paraguay.
And then we have also also office in Costa Rica which is serving, serving the central and northern northern North American countries.
But the special feature of WMO is that our members are and, and our, our so-called PRS of the WMO, they are the Med service directors and, and we are very much operating in collaboration with the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services and, and, and, and, and WMO is family organisation.
And actually the big mess of our work is, is carried out by individual countries and, and in, in Latin America, in South America, we have 13 countries which are active in our, our work and, and, and, and, and, and, and when it comes to total financing of WMO, we have assessed contributions coming from, from, from countries and, and, and they're the biggest financier at the moment is, is United States #2 is China and, and #3 is Japan.
So it depends on the, on the GNI of the, of the countries, what is the, what is the fraction of financing.
And besides that we have also external financing and and that's very much devoted to improvement of the of the weather observing systems and improvement of the early warning service capacities of the of the countries.
And there are also beneficiary countries in, in South America.
Mostly we are we are concentrating on on less developed countries in Africa and island states.
Once we we do this kind of capacity development work.
[Other language spoken]
Please question in the room.
Yes, Catherine, again I have a question regarding places that have been sink and that are now in fact source of carbon.
You mentioned Amazon in Africa, you have the basin of the Congo that is in fact storing a big amount of of carbon.
So do you think that the international community.
Should financially support the countries that are in fact having this potential.
I mean the forests and their territories like in in Latin.
[Other language spoken]
Do you have any plans and what?
Would be your message for Cup 28, Thank you.
[Other language spoken]
So if you read the most recent IPCC report, it's demonstrating what has happened since 1850.
And in in that report, they are clearly showing that that Europe has been the only region where this deforestation hasn't led to increase of the of the carbon emissions in all of the other regions.
Deforestation has has played quite important role in, in Latin America, in, in, in Africa, in some parts of Asia and, and Pacific.
This deforestation has been actually the dominant source of emissions and, and we should reverse this, this, this development and, and, and, and at the moment some countries are having forestation programmes.
I have seen it, for example, in Kenya and Ethiopia with my own own ice and, and, and also in Latin America, there's a potential to, to grow more forests and, and, and sometimes they are related to forest industry, which is using, using those, those resources.
But sometimes there are also unrealistic expectations that we could, we could grow forests in, in, in Sahara, for example, where, where we, we don't have enough prohibitation and the soil is not suitable for that.
I personally visited South and Israel where they, they have planted trees in the, in the 60s and, and the trees are still about two metres ****.
And, and the biomass that they are taking from the atmosphere is, is limited.
But this is also one of the, one of the ways that we should first stop deforestation.
But there's also potential to, to grow more forests and, and there's, there may be also economic interest for that, that we have these, these companies, like airline companies who are saying that they're compensating their emissions and, and, and, and there's a need for proof of that means, but there's also a potential for, for, for, for that.
But we can never solve this problem by by growing more forests because the the the consumption of fossil fuels is so massive that we could compensate it a bit, but but clearly we have to, we have to stop using fossil fuels at the last large scale.
Just wonder, add to what Secretary General said is that when you start growing forests, you need to be pretty careful because the forests are starting uptake when the trees are mature.
So for the 1st 10 years, when you do the referestation programme, your forest will be emitting CO2 and not taking it up because of the emissions which are coming from the soil.
So when you do the projects on the on the referestation, you need to take a look at the longer time horizon, not immediate as it's going on now with the carbon credits where you just put the seed and you think that the carbon credit is already created.
So in reality you need to it, it takes time until the until the plants get mature in only about after 10-15 years, depending on the species and depending as as Secretary General said, on the water availability and the quality of the soil, you may expect to have uptakes.
Unfortunately, currently every time when we have the reforestation programme, the measurements in the atmosphere are not done in those areas.
So when you ask the question about do we know what happens to the forest and how they behave, the places, for example in Africa are not monitored.
There's just a couple of stations which are available that do not provide us a level of the details on what is really happening with the forest.
In Amazon we have the direct measurements in the air and based on those measurements we can assess what is going on with the forest and the other parts of the world.
Those measurements are not available and we need to foster those development and we need to motivate at the cope that the member countries who do have the forest actually do the measurements in the atmosphere.
What happens with their forest.
Because as we've seen in Europe, the forest is there, but it's a drought and it's not taking up CO2.
Just to follow up about what you just mentioned, could you also give us other examples that are not covered by observation?
You just mentioned Africa, but other regions of the world too.
The other, the other places of the world where we critically need observation is the part of Asia where you have the tropical forests as well and where you can also expect some feedbacks related to particular La Nino, El Nino and also our forestation, reforestation and deforestation programmes.
Arctic is very critical area because in Arctic, if we look at the current composition of the observing network and talking about the climate feedbacks which are happening in Arctic with the melt of the permafrost, with the current observing system, it will take us about 30 years to actually detect the changes associated with the current feedbacks.
So if you want to observe what is happening on the ground, you do need to have the measurements which are much more than we have now.
And that that's the whole idea.
In the tropics, in the, in the Latin America, we do have those measurement programmes, which is for example in, in Brazil supported by Impair Institute of the Space Research and they have the aircraft measurement campaigns.
But those aircraft measurement campaigns are funded by the research funds.
So the the institution is always looking for the continuation, asking for the funds from the philanthropic organisation, from the research institution.
This is not sustainable.
So if the funds are not found that the long term data sets of 15 years will be interrupted just because those measurements are not performed.
And then something may happen and we actually don't know what triggered that particular process.
And of course, ocean, I mean, ocean takes up 25% of CO2 and the measurement programmes which are currently running over the ocean are completely deficient.
We are just observing around 3% of global ocean territory, given that it's taking up 25% and may stop doing so in the future climate.
So we don't know what happens there.
Maya plants, you have another question or follow up?
Yes, thank you very much.
My question is regarding the loss and damage fund.
Is WMO going to lead the discussions on the topic during COP 28?
Can you tell us a little bit of your participation and how you are participating on these discussions or leading these negotiations?
[Other language spoken]
This is of course one of the hot topics which was already debated at the pre COP meeting a couple of weeks ago.
And, and from our perspective, it's smartest is to avoid these losses and, and this early warning services for all programme that that we are jointly managing together with the UNDRR International Telecommunication Union and Red Cross red coercion and aims at avoiding human losses, but also economic losses.
And in, in, in developed in countries like Europe or North America and, and, and these kind of ****, **** income countries, we typically have modern early warning services and, and we can avoid both human losses and economic losses.
And that's why we have this programme to cover 100 countries which don't have proper early warning services in place.
And that's, that's, that's, that's our, our perspective to loss and damage.
So it's, it's best to try to avoid losses by, by, by, by having proper early warning services in place.
And of course, we have seen very unfortunate cases, for example, this Libyan Libyan flooding, flooding case, which is a demonstration.
When and the services are not in proper, proper shape and and the authorities are not functioning as as as as they should, we can see quite dramatic human losses and also economic losses.
Christian last one.
It might be a good last one, thank you.
With all the crises that are going on, Ukraine and now Gaza, the topic of climate change seems to be falling out of the headlines.
How what are your thoughts on that?
You know, how can you make sure that that doesn't happen?
Because it's not going away with with other crises that are going around.
I think that that's a valid concern and, and we were already quite afraid when this COVID-19 pandemic began whether what's going to happen happened to the climate negotiations.
And despite of COVID-19, we had fairly successful Glasgow COP meeting.
So we went fairly wide participation.
But of course, it's, there's a risk that this, this Ukraine and Palestine, Palestinian crisis are shadowing, shadowing the climate theme and, and climate change is still the biggest challenge for the for the welfare of the mankind this century.
It's not the the problem tomorrow, but it's, it's, it's, it's a long term and, and it's a persistent challenge if we are not able to able to tackle it.
But it's promising that for example, today by the NXT we're able to have a discussion and and one of the concrete outcomes was that they have agreed to to collaborate in field of, of of climate.
Paula De Frau, you have a last one.
Yeah, sorry.
I just just wanted to to know where things stood in terms of your the soft programme, whether you may have received additional financing for the Systemic Observation financing facility?
[Other language spoken]
[Other language spoken]
So we have, we have a challenge that the observing systems in Africa and the island States and some some individual Latin American and Asian countries are very limited, which means that the early warning services in those areas are suffering from the, from the lack of input observation observations for the, for the, for the, for the, for the weather forecasting models.
And, and we have also the limitations in understanding the basic climate of those countries where we don't have enough, enough observations.
We have already chosen 62 countries where we are improving the the, the the basic ground based and balloon sounding observing systems.
But to, to, to be able to achieve the goal, we have to get additional financing.
We the aim is that that that COP 28 we would hear some.
Get some new pletses and and and and all together we are talking about half billion dollars scale investment need during the for the coming coming four years to be to be able to achieve this target that we have been set and which has been actually set by Secretary Senator Antonio Antonio Guterres.
And besides that, we have to of course, invest in early warning service capacities and infrastructures, IT infrastructures and also make sure that the the Emergency Management authorities are acting and, and, and they are part of the part of this value, this chain of of early warnings.
Thank you very much everyone.
I don't think there are any more questions.
Thank you for your contributions.
Please note that the report, the bulletin is now available on our travel board.
You received the link with the press release and the press release is now available in all 6 languages.
It is very detailed so you will find all the details in in your languages.
So the press conference is now coming to an end.
If you have any question or request for interviews, please reach out to Claire Nelis to organise an interview and I wish you a good end of day.
[Other language spoken]