The U.N. weather agency is reporting that 2023 was the driest year in more than three decades for the world’s rivers, as the record-hot year underpinned the drying up of water flows and contributed to prolonged droughts in many places.

Winter sports are facing a long-time crisis because of climate change and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation has teamed up with the United Nations weather agency.

The U.N. weather agency says it has confirmed that Tropical Cyclone Freddy, a deadly Indian Ocean storm that lashed eastern Africa last year, was the longest-lasting cyclone ever recorded — at 36 days.

The U.N. weather agency is sounding a “red alert” about global warming, citing record-smashing increases last year in greenhouse gases, land and water temperatures and melting of glaciers and sea ice.

Despite Detroit’s roller coaster weather, 2023 was Earth’s warmest year in 174 years of observational recordkeeping, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Scientists also said the melting of sea ice led to record low ice coverage in the Antarctic.

The U.N. weather agency is reporting that glaciers shrank more than ever from 2011 and 2020 and the Antarctic ice sheet lost 75 percent more compared to the previous ten years, as it released its latest stark report about the fallout on the planet from climate change.

The U.N. weather agency says 2023 is all but certain to be the hottest year on record, and warning of worrying trends that suggest increasing floods, wildfires, glacier melt, and heat waves in the future.

Spain has recorded its third hottest summer since official records began 62 years ago.

The U.N. weather agency says Earth endured its hottest Northern Hemisphere summer ever measured with a record warm August capping a season of brutal and deadly temperatures.

Floridians pray that when Idalia hits the Gulf Coast it won’t join the long list of destructive Atlantic Ocean storms whose names started with “I.”.

July has been so hot so far that scientists calculate that this month will be the globally hottest on record and likely the warmest human civilization has seen, even though there are several days left to sweat through.

The World Meteorological Organization, an agency of the UN, said the first week of July was the hottest week on record for the planet as a whole.

The U.N. weather agency reported Monday that nearly 12,000 extreme weather, climate and water-related events over much of the past half-century around the globe have killed more than 2 million people and caused economic damage of $4.3 trillion.

The United Nations' weather agency says there's a two-out-of-three chance that the world will reach the internationally accepted global temperature threshold for limiting the worst effects of climate change sometime in the next five years.

Looking back at 2022’s weather with months of analysis, the World Meteorological Organization says last year really was as bad as it seemed when people were muddling through it.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialized agency within the United Nations, just released statistics confirming that Earth’s unusual warming continued in 2022, despite the ongoing La Nina in the Pacific.

The United Nations' weather agency says the state of Earth's climate is bad and getting worse faster than before, especially with sea level rise accelerating.

The three main greenhouse gases hit record high levels in the atmosphere last year, the U.N. weather agency said Wednesday, calling it an “ominous” sign.

The U.N. climate chief has urged countries to keep up hope and focus on tackling global warming despite the many obstacles now to international cooperation.

Morning 4 is a quick roundup of stories we think you should know about to start your day.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialized agency within the United Nations, has just released its State of the Climate 2021 report.

Meteorologists are retiring the name Ida from the list of Atlantic hurricane names.

The chief of the United Nations has announced a project to put every person on Earth in range of early warning systems for natural disasters within five years.

Every several years, the IPCC issues a series of scientific reports detailing the status and impacts of Earth’s warming climate.

The U.N. weather agency has certified a 38-degree Celsius (100.4 Fahrenheit) reading in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk last year as the highest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic.

The U.N. weather agency says greenhouse gas concentrations hit a new record high last year and increased at a faster rate than the annual average for the last decade.

The U.N. weather agency says the world and especially urban areas experienced a brief and sharp drop in emissions of air pollutants last year.

A new report from the United Nations weather agency finds the world is getting several times more weather disasters than in the 1970s.

Italy is baking in sweltering temperatures that continue to drive deadly wildfires.

A new world weather agency forecast says it'll likely be so hot in the next five years that there's a 40% chance the globe will push past the temperature limit set by the Paris climate agreement.

The week aheadScattered showers will end Wednesday morning, and then it will become partly cloudy and windy. It will be partly cloudy Wednesday night, with lows in the upper 40s. AdRain reigns Thursday night -- this will be the good soaking rain that we desperately need, with an inch of water possible. Weekend forecastIt’ll be partly cloudy to start on Saturday, then becomes mostly cloudy. Remember to download the FREE Local4Casters weather app -- it’s easily one of the best in the nation.

(NOAA via AP)With named storms coming earlier and more often in warmer waters, the Atlantic hurricane season is going through some changes with meteorologists ditching the Greek alphabet during busy years. The Greek alphabet had only been used twice in 2005 and nine times last year in a record-shattering hurricane season. AdMeanwhile, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration is recalculating just what constitutes an average hurricane season. STARTING EARLIERMIT hurricane researcher Kerry Emanuel said “this whole idea of hurricane season should be revisited." So a warming world means the new normal is busy hurricane seasons just like the last 30 years.

The differences in average global temperatures among the three warmest years – 2016, 2019 and 2020 – are indistinguishably small. The average global temperature in 2020 was about 14.9°C, 1.2 (± 0.1) °C above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level. For instance, the United States reported a record 22 billion-dollar disasters in 2020, which was the nation’s fifth warmest year on record. NASA and Copernicus Climate Change Service estimate that 2020 is jointly the warmest year on record together with 2016. NOAA and the United Kingdom’s HadCRUT dataset both ranked 2020 as the second warmest behind 2016, with JRA ranking 2020 as the third warmest.

“There is at least a one-in-five chance of it temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2024,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said. The Paris climate accord set a goal of not exceeding 1.5-degree (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming since pre-industrial times. --Death Valley, California, hit 129.9 degrees (54.4 degrees Celsius), the hottest the world has seen in 80 years. --Record wildfires struck California and Colorado in the western United States, following a major fire season and record heat in Australia. --The Arctic had record wildfires and a prolonged heat wave culminating in a 100-degree mark (38 degrees Celsius) in Siberia in June.

Geneva, 2 December 2020 (WMO) - Climate change continued its relentless march in 2020, which is on track to be one of the three warmest years on record. 2011-2020 will be the warmest decade on record, with the warmest six years all being since 2015, according to the World Meteorological Organization. “The average global temperature in 2020 is set to be about 1.2 °C above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level. Despite the current La Niña conditions, this year has already shown near record heat comparable to the previous record of 2016,” said Prof. Taalas. Arctic sea ice for July and October 2020 was the lowest on record.

GENEVA The United Nations weather agency says this summer will go down for leaving a deep wound in the cryosphere -- the planets frozen parts -- amid a heat wave in the Arctic, shrinking sea ice and the collapse of a leading Canadian ice shelf. The weather agency said in a statement that many new temperature records have been set in recent months, including in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk. The town, located in Siberia above the Arctic Circle line, reached 38 degrees Celsius (100 F) on June 20. She noted a heat wave across the Arctic, r ecord-breaking wildfires in Siberia, nearly record-low sea ice extent, and the collapse of one of the last fully intact Canadian ice shelves. The WMO is preparing to release on Sept. 9 a report on the impact of climate change on the cryosphere.

There is a ~70% chance that one or more months during the next five years will be at least 2.7F warmer than preindustrial levels. It is extremely unlikely (~3%) that the entire five-year mean temperature for 2020-2024 will be 2.7F warmer than preindustrial levels. The development of near-term prediction capability was driven by the WMO co-sponsored World Climate Research Programme. With the UKs Meteorology Office acting as lead center, climate prediction groups from Spain, Germany, Canada, China, the U.S., Japan, Australia, Sweden and Denmark contributed new predictions this year. Combining forecasts from climate prediction centers worldwide enables a higher quality product than what can be obtained from any single source.

A World Meteorological Organization (WMO) committee of experts has established two new world records for the longest reported distance and the longest reported duration for a single lightning flash in, respectively, Brazil and Argentina. The greatest duration for a single lightning flash is 16.73 seconds from a flash that developed continuously over northern Argentina on March 4, 2019. (WMO)These are extraordinary records from single lightning flash events. These new instruments include the Geostationary Lightning Mappers (GLMs) on the R-series Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-16 and 17) that recorded the new lightning records, and their orbiting counterparts from Europe (the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) Lightning Imager) and China (FY-4 Lightning Mapping Imager). Other previously accepted WMO lightning extremes are:

In this handout photo provided by Olga Burtseva, children play in the Krugloe lake outside Verkhoyansk, the Sakha Republic, about 4660 kilometers (2900 miles) northeast of Moscow, Russia, Sunday, June 21, 2020. A Siberian town that endures the world's widest temperature range has recorded a new high amid a hear wave that is contributing to severe forest fires. Russia's meteorological service said the thermometer hit 38 Celsius (100.4 F) on Saturday in Verkhoyansk, in the Sakha Republic about 4660 kilometers (2900 miles) northeast of Moscow. (Olga Burtseva via AP)GENEVA The U.N. weather agency is investigating media reports suggesting a new record high temperature of over 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Arctic Circle amid a heatwave and prolonged wildfires in eastern Siberia. The World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday that its looking to verify the temperature reading on Saturday in the Russian town of Verkoyansk with Roshydromet, the Russian federal service for hydro-meteorological and environmental monitoring.

DETROIT - At 10 a.m. Sunday, the World Meteorological Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, released to the world a new update about earths warming climate. In fact, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wrote in his forward to the report that climate change is the defining challenge of our time.You can read key messages from the report below. The global climate in 2015-2019Average global temperature for 2015-2019 is on track to be the warmest of any equivalent period on record. There are clear benefits to keeping warming to 1.5 C compared to 2 C or higher. Limiting warming to 1.5 C can go hand in hand with reaching other world goals, such as achieving sustainable development and eradicating poverty.