WMO press conference 2 December 2020

[Other language spoken]

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you very much for joining us and thank you, as usual for UN television posting this today.

The United Nations Secretary General has made a major speech on the state of the planet and in support of that, the World Meteorological Organisation is releasing its provisional report on the state of the global climate in 2020.

We've sent you all the materials under embargo in all UN languages.

Without further ado, I will pass the floor to Professor Petrie Tallis, Secretary General of World Meteorological Organisation.

On the on the virtual link up, we also have Doctor Max Dilley, who is the director responsible for climate at the World Reacheological Organisation.

And we have Doctor Omar Badour who is the coordinator of the WMO climate statements.

Doctor Badour can can take questions in French, in Arabic and Professor Tallis in English and if anybody wants in, in Finnish.

[Other language spoken]

So Professor Tallis, over to you please.

Thank you Claire and thanks for all of you for joining this event.

And we are very sorry that this happening so late that we are synchronising this with the fields of good errors so that things at the same same time.

And we have classically published this report that says before the POP meeting, as you all know, this year we are not going to have the POP meeting because of the COVID we relate to, to next year, which is we're going to have the the 26th in Glasgow and, and, and, and this report that I'm going to show you soon, I will tell you what what has happened to the climate this year.

And we have broken again several records.

We haven't broken reports on temperature because of a fairly strong learning, yeah, which has been cooling the planet for the past past months.

But in all other parameters, we have broken reports and and we have seen quite unusual phenomena in several parts of the work like Western United States.

But I will show you some slides and demonstrate what we have finally.

And I have the slides up please.

So this is the the temperature curve and, and so far we have been, we have seen warming of 1.2° above the pre industrial times.

And, and you can see that the frame is quite obvious.

And without this very strong planning here that we have seen in recent months, we have broken the previously fall of 2019 when, when the temperatures were booted by various things from I mean somewhere in any new and, and, and the next like.

So where these anomalies have been observed, this is for first they're demonstrating the Southern Pacific anomaly, which is this family name.

It's important planet and it has also had an impact on, on rainfall patterns in, in many parts of the world in recent months.

And, and then we have observed unusually warm temperatures in, in the Arctic and especially in the Russian, Russian Arctic.

And, and in general, you can see that the Eurasian continent has been much warmer than normally and there has been an anomaly South of Greenland that has been a persistent feature.

And that's most likely the slowing down of the so-called Gulf Stream, which is bringing hot water from from Caribbean to watch the Northern Europe next week.

And the last week we published our greenhouse gas report and, and, and by the end of last year, we saw this negative trend in in, in Maine greenhouse gas foreign places to continue.

And, and this COVID has let this slide drop into every since because of the lifetime of carbon dioxide so long we haven't seen any any improvement in atmospheric concentrations so far.

Next, please and we have stored about 93% of the excess heat that we have produced to the planet by sensing the greenhouse gas concentrations to the oceans.

And you can see that we have broken recalls in the ocean heat content and and and yeah, we have different depths of the ocean and ocean.

And you can see that in all of the depths we have seen similar frame and last year, this year has been the last year was the warmest almost the report.

We have this report until the end of end of last year next, please.

And sea level rise has continued.

But this recent the Lavinia has got of course slightly dropping the sea level price and, and, and, and average the trend has been more than three millimetres per year.

And, and in recent years we have seen a boost in the in the in the sea level rise and, and we have seen numbers between 4:00 to 5:00 millimetres per year.

And last century it was typically one to two millimetres per year.

And this post is very much related to the melting of the major laziest worldwide.

We have seen doubling of the of the Greenland that glacier melting fast, fast decade and, and also this Antarctic glacier where we have the last mass of, of glacier worldwide.

The study melting this is a bit the bad news next, please.

And this sea level rise has been uneven and you can see some some red areas here where the where the average sea level rise has been more than global global average.

And this is because of also currents and temperatures and, and, and also the fact that what what is pelting in Northern hemispheres and has an impact on in the Southern Hemisphere and vice.

And, and you can see certain areas where this has been this has been exceeding the the average season.

And for example, Pacific islands with some very sensitive sea level rise, you have seen above normal, normal sea level rise.

[Other language spoken]

And in the Arctic we have already melt the about 75% of the sea ice mass and, and, and also this ice coverage both in Spain we have two seasons, we have parts in September and and September is this brownish curve.

And you can see that last year was we, we observed the second lowest amount of Arctic sea ice when it comes to coverage.

And and also the spend in in springtime has been obvious, but we haven't broken broken reports this year.

[Other language spoken]

And in especially in United States that people are talking about global warming and, and this is a bit misleading because the main impacts of climate change, they are not only related to heat waves of temperatures, but they are related to changes in the precipitation patterns.

And, and here you can see see that that these brown areas indicate the areas of drought.

And we have seen very severe drought hitting many parts of Southern America and, and also also western and southern parts of the United States and and also southern parts of Canada.

And then we have seen severe flooding problems especially in in in Sahel area, it's usually very dry area.

And, and then in China and the Vietnam, they have been facing report breaking the floods this year.

So these changes in the predation patterns, they are having big impact on the on the welfare of human beings and they are also leading to economic loss.

[Other language spoken]

And drought and heat have caused the wildfires that we have seen record-breaking wildfires in California and in Colorado in the United States.

And we have also recorded new temperature extreme in Death Valley 54.4°.

And the hurricane season in in that hurricane season has been recorded breaking in the case of amount of of storms.

We have seen 29 named storms which is reported so far.

But we haven't seen too many category four and five hurricanes, which which is difference to the previous strong season which was in 2017 when we observe the two category four and two category 55 hurricanes with lots of damage in the United States and also Caribbean, Caribbean states.

And our friends from FAO, they have estimated that because of the, of this weather extremes and, and which are boosted by the COVID situation, we have seen 10 million, these displacements and, and we have seen 690 million people who were undernourished.

And actually there have been more casualties because of, of that than the COVID worldwide.

But, but the media is more interested in what's happening in, in the most developed parts of the world.

And that's why these numbers are not usually reported.

And there has been also lots of white life because of these weather and climate events.

[Other language spoken]

So that's all from my side.

So, so in summary, we have seen record-breaking year, but in temperatures we didn't see records because of the of the recent Laminia event.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you, Professor.

Professor Telus, Doctor Badour or Doctor Didi, do you want to say anything to elaborate on what is said or if not we will go straight to questions.

[Other language spoken]

I think Professor Talas covered the the key indicators just to draw attention that this report has benefited from record-breaking participation from West Member States, 70 Member States and 60 experts from around the world and seven United Nation agencies or provided data on the physical aspect as well as impact aspect.

On the physical aspect.

It should be noted also that the Arctic part of the world is really suffering major change in these days.

One includes the CIS that the Professor Talas mentioned.

We are breaking records after records, but also the increasing temperature in that region.

The Arctic recorded close to 5°C above the long term average, which is far more than what we record globally.

And also this was also demonstrated by the unprecedented record temperature in the station in Russia, 58 is tropical kind of temperature and we are going to verify whether it's the record-breaking for the whole Arctic region.

So those are some additional signals that the global, the regional climate is, is changing and it's manifested by the global temperature but as well but, but other features that are really critical.

Back to the Arctic, also the change in the Arctic is not only for the region but also for the whole global climate system.

The gesture, for instance, is one of the regulator of the weather patterns of the Northern Hemisphere.

So anything changing in the Arctic affect also the weather experience in terms of the heat waves, in terms of also sometimes cold waves that affect part of the world.

So we have to look closely to this region.

We need also from a metrological point of view.

W Moore is sponsoring A programme from Creosphere Watch.

There is a need to invest in observation in that part of the world because we have few stations that report to us.

And this how we can further monitor the original climate as well as where the global climate in more more, more efficient and more steady way.

On the impact side, there are a lot of information in the report.

One thing is that this year actually the impact caused associated to the extreme hazards from heterometrical hazards were compounded by the COVID pandemic because a humanitarian agency had difficulties to relieve the people affected by by hazards because of restriction in mobility and and access to to the facilities over.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Doctor Badour.

OK, if Doctor Dilly doesn't want to say anything, we'll go to questions.

Christiane Erich from the German Press Agency, you have the first one.

Thank you, Claire, and thank you for this briefing.

[Other language spoken]

I see in the statement Europe had the hottest.

On record from January to October.

Could you tell us whether Europe is on course to have the hottest year ever for the entire year?

And just for the record, could you please tell us again why the dip in CO2 emissions because of COVID this year will not actually have any positive effect on the climate?

[Other language spoken]

We have to wait for the, for the, for the December month.

And as I said, said that this Laminia is having global cooling effect and, and, and without that we would have for sure broken, broken the whole time recording in Europe.

So, so we don't know it yet and, and this carbon dioxide emissions were dropping this year by three to 7% according to the report that we published in in September.

And, and, and and more, more more recently, the emissions have returned back to almost the same level as as was the case last year.

But since the lifetime of carbon dioxide is more than 100 years, these kind of short term anomalies don't affect the big picture.

So it's you could consider carbon dioxide as with the cumulative thing, so that once we emit more carbon, it doesn't disappear, it stays there for a long time.

And since we have continued emitting carbon dioxide with the atmosphere this year, a little bit less than last year, we haven't seen a drop in the in the concentrations yet.

This kind of emission drop should continue from year to year or several years before we could see see a positive, positive effect.

[Other language spoken]

And now Jeremy launch from Radio, Radio France.

[Other language spoken]

Claire, I would like to to ask the question in French for Mr Bardour maybe so I can answer in French too, but I will ask it again in English.

Just for the record.

The the question in English would would be is it normal to have 2020 such a record year with El Nina?

At the same time, do we have to expect that El Nina won't have any cooling effect in the next future because of climate change?

Like it's one of them or Francais killer impact the Del Nina, It's normal.

Mercy mercy Jamie effective more new new new constructor in tondos arrows the manual general DNA lot the oski concern landpack the fundamental variability in new La Nina is salute as it tondos global about name Sylvia and pitiful for this more.

[Other language spoken]

Don't the the the the.

[Other language spoken]

Does anybody need that answer in English or if not, we'll go to the next question.

Omar, perhaps just very briefly summarise what you said in in English just very briefly.

[Other language spoken]

What we can say that La Nina and Nina signals are super unposed over the long term increase of temperature.

So despite some cooling effect here or warming effect there, the long term trend is on upward level.

This year La Nina has already shown some slight influence on cooling down the temperature, but despite this we are still recording temperature comparable to the 2016 which has been boosted by illuminium.

The equation also by the future whether La Linea could have an effect or will disappear completely.

We will not notice disappearance, total disappearance of illuminium anaemia because they are part of the climate variability and whenever they will happen, they will certainly affect slightly the temperature, but not in the way that it will change the long term trend.

[Other language spoken]

Now Laurent, CFO of the Swiss, Swiss news agency.

[Other language spoken]

So what do you expect for 2021 because there won't be necessarily La Nina event and we expect a huge economic recovery.

So how worse might the situation be?

[Other language spoken]

As I said, these concentrations, they react very slowly to the to these kind of changes.

But but it's likely that we would see some industrial production taking place next year, which we didn't do last year.

And and we expect to see also boost in the economy, economies next year.

So it's likely that the emission growth, the rate will be much higher next year as as as was the case this year and, and, and even during during recent months, we have been breaking records in, in carbon dioxide concentrations and, and, and that trend supposed to continue.

And if you'd like to reach the parish agreement to all limit this emission growth the the downward the path in the coming five years and then become carbon neutral by 2050.

And at the moment the the situation is somewhat promising because the European Union, Japan, South Korea, they have already indicated they were they're aiming at becoming carbon neutral different by 2050.

China is planning to become carbon neutral by 2060.

And, and we expect that USA would also have this 2050 target with which forthcoming President Biden as as is, is, is aiming at.

So the situation global is quite hopeful and, and we have now 2/3 of the emissions USA joins under such regime and, and more than 70% of global economy.

And this might also trigger other countries like India and and Russia to join join that kind of targets.

[Other language spoken]

The the report in the press release also does make reference to some predictions which come from the UK's Met Office on temperatures in the next five years.

And does Professor Tallis or Omar or Max, do you want to address that?

[Other language spoken]

I was just going to pick up on that point.

As the secretary general already described the the trajectory of the temperature will take a long time to to reduce.

See, despite the efforts that are being made now to reduce the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

So what we can expect next year, we can't say if it's going to be the warmest year or not, but 2011 to 2020 was the warmest decade on on record.

And as there was just saying, we now have a a prediction, there's a problem about A at least a one in five possibility of the temperature at least temporarily reaching 1.5° between now and 2020.

Four 1.5° of course is the lower limit of what the Paris Agreement is trying to limit the temperature to.

So it will take a while for the the reductions in the emissions take effect and meanwhile we're starting to start the 1.5 lower limit.

[Other language spoken]

Thanks very much.

And now the next question is Robin Millard of the French news agency AFP.

[Other language spoken]

Reading the report, it says that the data puts 2020 on course to be the the second warmest year, but the the difference between the top three years is very small.

So are we clear that there's the possibility that 2020 could eventually be the hottest year ever recorded once all the data is complete?

[Other language spoken]

So, so, so that's very unlikely to, to, to, to, to be the case because we only have one month left and and we have this ongoing Laminia, which is, which is supposed to cool the planet for the coming, coming months.

So this is not going to be over.

So, so the question is whether this this year is going to be the second or third hottest year on year on record.

[Other language spoken]

And now Shane Shu from Central China Television.

[Other language spoken]

This is Shane from CCTV question to Secretary General, you also mentioned about the carbon neutral goal for the for different countries and you also mentioned China.

So my question is, what do you think about China's aim to cut the carbon dioxide emission for the coming years?

And how do we evaluate this work for this year?

[Other language spoken]

I think that that's excellent news and, and, and China has a good reason to, to, to have such an ambitious role because Sinai is also going to suffer because of climate sense.

Your big, the cities and, and the centre of your economy is on the, on the eastern coast and it's very low lying area and it's sensitive to sea level rise.

And then the melting of, of the glacier of Himalayas, it's going to release less water for, for the big Asian rivers.

It's been hit both India and China and, and, and, and this kind of lack of water is also one of the one of the challenges.

And, and, and since China is the biggest emitter worldwide, it's good, good news that, that China aims at joining the club of, of carbon neutrality countries.

And, and one of the key issues is to convert all fired energy to become based on, on nuclear, hydro or, or renewable energies.

And, and at the same time, there's a chance to improve the air quality, which is one of the one of the major challenges at the moment.

And and also conversion of the of the of the vehicles will become either electric vehicles, biofueled or either zip fueled vehicles.

That's, that's that's also also important to reset that topic.

Thank you very much.

I don't see anybody else has raised their their hands.

So if there are no further questions, thank you everybody for for joining us.

[Other language spoken]

Professor Tallis, Dr Baddoor, Dr Dilly, and thanks again as always to you on television.

Thank you very much indeed.

[Other language spoken]