UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for urgent action to avoid what he described as a “climate hell.”

Guterres warned about the speed at which the world is “moving in the wrong direction” away from climate system stability.

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In a speech marking World Environment Day, he urged a global reduction in the production and use of fossil fuels by about 30% by 2030. He said, “We need an exit from the highway to climate hell.”

The European Union’s climate change monitoring service reported that the past twelve months have been the hottest on record annually.

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The Copernicus Climate Change Service stated that the global average temperature for the year ending in May exceeded the pre-industrial average by about 1.63 degrees Celsius, making it the warmest period since data recording began in 1940.

The average of the past twelve months does not mean that the world has exceeded the global warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, which measures average temperature over decades, and scientists warn that exceeding it would lead to extreme and irreversible consequences, according to Reuters.

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In a separate report, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) of the United Nations indicated that there is about an 80% chance of the average temperature temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for at least one year in the next five years, up from a 66% chance last year.