The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has released its “State of the Global Climate 2023” report, which tracks the status of the global climate. The key takeaway from the latest report is that 2023 was the hottest year on record by a large margin, moving the world much closer to breaching the 1.5 degree Celsius limit set in the Paris agreement.

Other takeaways include global records being broken in the areas of ocean heat, sea level rise, Antarctic sea-ice loss, and glacier loss. The report also discusses extreme weather and its impacts on human society, with severe socio-economic consequences observed due to extreme heat and flooding events across the world, especially in the areas of food security and population displacement. Members are encouraged to utilize this report as a leadership-level overview of the current state of the climate. The WMO is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) responsible for promoting international cooperation on atmospheric science, climatology, hydrology and geophysics. Since 1993, it has issued annual statements on the status of the global climate to provide credible scientific information on climate and its variability. Read more at the WMO.