The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) a weather agency of the United Nations in its recent report said that the extreme weather events, supercharged by climate changes, affected nearly 62 million people around the world in 2018.
According to the annual report of WMO “state of Climate”, the planets biggest weather woes last year were floods which swamped nearly 35 million people, and droughts which affected another nine million.
Petteri Taalas, WMO secretary general said that since1998 about 4.5 billion around the world have been hurt by extreme weather. “Extreme weather has continued in early 2019, most recently with tropical Cyclone “Idai” which caused devastating floods and tragic loss of life in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi,” he added.
The WMO climate statement includes inputs from National Meteorological and Hydrological Services an extensive community of scientific experts and United Nations Agency.
The report suggested that the earth is almost 2 degree Fahrenheit warmer than it was in the late 1800s when the industrial revolution started, and the past four years have been the warmest on record.
Climate change, the number one cause of global warming is caused by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil. and gas, which release greenhouses gases like CO2 and methane into the earth’s atmosphere and oceans.