ISLAMABAD / PARIS: With the current month set to become the hottest ever on record, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has warned that extreme weather events caused by climate change – on the rise in Asia – are bound to affect food security and the continent’s ecosystems.

“The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived,” UN chief Antonio Guterres told reporters in New York, adding that: “Climate change is here. It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning.”

A fresh report by the WMO and Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) says it is “extremely likely” that July 2023 will be the hottest month on records going back to the 1940s.

According to the report, Asia is experiencing a faster rate of warming compared to the global average, with 81 weather, climate and water-related disasters recorded last year, the majority of which were floods and storms.

UN chief issues stark warning as WMO report reveals Asia experiencing fastest rate of warming

It said these calamities had directly affected more than 50 million people and caused more than 5,000 deaths, along with more than $36 billion in economic damages.

Impact on Pakistan

This included the 2022 floods, caused by record monsoon rains and glacial melt in Pakistan, which claimed hundreds of lives, inundating swathes of the country and washing away homes and transportation infrastructure, causing an estimated $15bn in damages, the highest in the region.

The country experienced significant loss of life and economic damage as it received 60 per cent of its normal total monsoon rainfall within just three weeks of the start of the monsoon season, WMO said.

The report notes that of the country’s 7,000 glaciers and over 3,000 glacial lakes, 36 were recently considered to be at high risk for outburst.

In addition, the report points out that an overall surface ocean warming trend has also been witnessed in the region since 1982, which includes the north-western Arabian Sea. In fact, this is one of the areas where warming rates exceed 0.5°C per decade, about three times faster than the global average.

Hottest month ever?

July 2023 is estimated to be roughly 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial mean. The WMO has confirmed that the first three weeks of July have been the warmest on record.

Temperature records have tumbled across the northern hemisphere this month, with many regions sweltering through weeks of unrelenting heat.

While large swathes of the US bake under a record-breaking heatwave, China has also ordered citizens to reduce exposure to the heat and ground-level ozone pollution, while extreme heat has left landscapes scorched and dry across the Mediterranean region.

In addition, scientists from the World Weather Attribution group found this week that the heatwaves in parts of Europe and North America would have been almost “impossible” without climate change.

Carlo Buontempo, Director of C3S, said the temperatures in the period had been “remarkable”, with an anomaly so large that scientists are confident the record has been shattered even before the month ends.

“We don’t have to wait for the end of the month to know this. Short of a mini-Ice Age over the next days, July 2023 will shatter records across the board,” Mr Guterres said in New York.

While the WMO would not call the record outright, instead waiting until the availability of all finalised data in August, an analysis by Germany’s Leipzig University released on Thursday found that July 2023 would clinch the record.

This month’s mean global temperature is projected to be at least 0.2C (0.4F) warmer than July 2019, the former hottest in the 174-year observational record, according to EU data. The margin of difference between now and July 2019 is so substantial that we can already say with absolute certainty that it is going to be the warmest July, Leipzig climate scientist Karsten Haustein said.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2023