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24/04/24 11:21 AM IST

New World Meteorological Organisation report released

In News
  • In 2023, there were 79 events associated with hydrometeorological hazards, affecting more than nine million people and directly killing over 2,000, across Asia, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
Major Highlights
Temperature
  • In 2023, the average annual surface temperature was 1.87 degree Celsius above the 1961–1990 average and 0.91 degree Celsius above the 1991–2020 average.
  • Just to put it in perspective, the world has become at least 1.1 degree Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average (1850-1900).
  • To calculate the temperature difference, Asia and the world have different reference periods because the former has insufficient data prior to the 1900s, according to the report.
  • Asia has gotten more warm in recent decades than other regions except Europe.
  • The warming trend in Asia in 1991–2023 was almost double the warming trend during the 1961–1990 period, and much larger than the trends of the previous 30-year period.
Glaciers
  • In the glaciological year 2022-2023, 20 out of 22 observed glaciers in the High Mountain Asia (HMA) region — a high-elevation area centred on the Tibetan Plateau, which contains the largest volume of ice outside of the polar regions — showed continued mass loss.
  • This happened primarily due to record-breaking high temperatures and dry conditions in the East Himalayas, the WMO report said.
  • In the past 40 years, these glaciers have recorded significant mass losses, with an increase in the rate of mass loss since the mid-1990s.
Precipitation
  • In 2023, rainfall was below normal in large parts of countries like Turkmenistan, Pakistan, and Myanmar.
  • In India, the summer monsoon season rainfall, averaged over India from June to September, was about 6% below the 1971–2000 average.
  • For the second consecutive year, certain regions in south-west India, the Ganges catchment, and the lower course of the Brahmaputra received less-than-normal precipitation,” according to the report.
  • Excess rainfall was observed around the lower course of the Indus River (Pakistan), the Tenasserim Range (Myanmar), in Kamchatka and the Kolyma Range (Russian Federation).
Sea surface temperature (SST)
  • The global average sea surface temperature (SST) has been off the charts since mid-March 2023.
  • Ocean temperatures in Asia have been no different. Last year, the worst affected was the North-west Pacific Ocean, where the area-averaged sea surface temperature anomalies were the warmest on record.
  • Warming of the upper-ocean (0 m–700 m) is particularly strong in the North-Western Arabian Sea, the Philippine Sea, and the seas east of Japan, more than three times faster than the global average.
Source- Indian Express

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