Climate change poses an “existential threat” to life on Earth, a panel of leading scientists warned on Tuesday in a report analyzing extreme weather events in 2023 and human inaction, AFP reported.

The study, published in the journal BioScience, examined 35 global “vital indicators” including CO2 pollution, energy and meat consumption per capita, deforestation due to fires and days of extreme heat. 20 of these indicators reached record levels in 2023, concludes the international scientific coalition.

“In fact, we are shocked by the severity of extreme weather events in 2023. We have entered an uncharted territory that scares us,” they write.

Oceans: the temperature “was absolutely non-standard”

While 2023 is set to be the hottest year on record, entire regions have experienced deadly heat, storms and floods, sometimes one disaster after another.

As for the oceans, the temperature “has been completely out of the ordinary” for several months, and scientists have not yet been able to fully explain it, says Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

For these scientists, the point is clear: “life on planet Earth is under siege.”

Yet humanity has made only “minimal progress” in reducing greenhouse gas emissions: concentrations have reached record levels and fossil fuel subsidies have skyrocketed.

“We will not avoid certain inflection points, but on the contrary, we will slow down the damage”

“We must change our perspective on the climate emergency, which is no longer an isolated environmental problem, but a systemic and existential threat,” the report said, a month before the 28th UN climate conference in Dubai.

The Paris Agreement’s most ambitious goal, limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, will need to be measured over many years before it can be considered achieved.

But that limit could be exceeded every year, warns study co-author William Ripple, opening the way for a vicious cycle of worsening warming: melting polar ice caps, disappearing forests, melting permafrost, disappearing corals and so on.

“Once these tipping points are passed, the climate may change in ways that will be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse,” warns this University of Oregon professor.

“We will not avoid certain tipping points, but rather slow down the damage,” Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter told AFP, stressing the need for drastic emissions cuts.

Every fraction of a degree counts and the “game is not over yet.”

The report warns that by the end of the century, between three and six billion people could be “outside the habitable region” of the globe.