Celeste Saulo

Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached new record highs in 2023, locking in future temperature increases for years to come, the United Nations warned on Monday.

Levels of the three main greenhouse gases, the climate-warming carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, all increased yet again last year, the U.N.'s weather and climate agency said.

Rising temperatures should trigger a global "red alert," the United Nations' weather and climate agency chief said on Wednesday, after global heat indices again smashed records in August.

The world saw record average temperatures in August for the second year running, preliminary data from the EU's climate monitor seen by AFP showed.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent out a global climate "SOS" at a Pacific islands summit on Tuesday, unveiling research that shows the region's seas rising much more swiftly than global averages.

"I am in Tonga to issue a global SOS — Save Our Seas — on rising sea levels. A worldwide catastrophe is putting this Pacific paradise in peril" he said.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has indicated that July was likely the hottest month on record, following initial estimates suggesting it nearly surpassed the 2023 record, as reported by DPA.

Latin America and the Caribbean had their warmest year on record in 2023 as a "double-whammy" of El Nino and climate change caused major weather calamities, the World Meteorological Organization said Wednesday.

Asia was the world's most disaster-hit region from climate and weather hazards in 2023, the United Nations said Tuesday, with floods and storms the chief cause of casualties and economic losses.

Global temperatures hit record highs last year, and the U.N.'s weather and climate agency said Asia was warming at a particularly rapid pace.

The warming El Nino weather phenomenon that peaked in December was one of the five strongest ever recorded, the United Nations said Tuesday, predicting that it would produce above-normal temperatures from now to May.