Reports: Climate Change Growing Increasingly Worse
There is no equity when it comes to who is most affected most by climate change, researchers said Tuesday, as a pair of new reports were unveiled, highlighting who will suffer the most as a result of the record "hot and wild" climate as well as the "increasingly visible human footprint on extreme weather."
"We just had the hottest five-year period on record, with 2015 claiming the title of hottest individual year. Even that record is likely to be beaten in 2016," declared Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which released its five-year study of the global climate to attendees of the 22nd Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), also known as COP22, which is being held in Marrakesh, Morrocco this week.
While that information wasn't necessarily new, the study also found that these record temperatures and other indicators—rising sea levels, as well as declines in Arctic sea-ice extent, glaciers, and snow cover—further confirm that human activity is to blame for change.
Daniel Tiveau/CIFOR