World is off track in climate fight, but AI can help: UN

The world is still a long way from tackling the climate crisis, but the UN on Wednesday expressed hope that artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies can help tackle the enormous challenges.

In a new report, the United Nations warns that the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, appear to be being missed, with disastrous consequences.

The report, “United in Science,” prepared by several agencies and coordinated by the UN World Meteorological Organization, highlighted that greenhouse gas concentrations have reached record highs, which will cause temperatures to rise in the future.

“The science is clear: we are still a long way from achieving global climate goals,” WMO chief Celeste Saulo told reporters in Geneva.

If current policies remain unchanged, there is now a two-thirds chance that global warming will reach 3°C this century, the report warns.

Saulo said 2023 was already the warmest year on record, “by a large margin” and that the first eight months of this year showed the same trend.

“We are putting the planet on red alert,” she said.

At the same time, Saulo stressed that “there is hope”.

“We must have hope for future generations.”

The report was published ahead of the UN Summit on the Future taking place in New York this weekend. It highlights developments in the natural and social sciences and technological innovations.

“They could revolutionize climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development,” Saulo stressed.

AI and machine learning in particular could be “transformative technologies,” the report said, saying they could “radically change weather forecasting and provide society with better tools to respond to and adapt to climate change.”

The technologies, which are rapidly improving the processing of large amounts of data, could make expert weather models faster, cheaper and more accessible, enabling a “paradigm shift in the prediction of extreme and dangerous weather events,” the report said.

The report also highlights major advances in space-based Earth observations, which have “opened new frontiers” for understanding weather, climate, water and environmental patterns.

For example, satellite technologies make it possible to predict extreme weather conditions in hard-to-reach areas and in places where ground observations are not possible.

The WMO recognises that new technologies can also be detrimental to climate action, for example because of their high energy consumption.

Saulo called on countries to “establish controls to ensure that these developments are in the interests of the global community, … and to prevent negative consequences”.

© 2024 AFP