The World Meteorological Organization, through the Commission for Climatology, has been issuing climate statements since 1993 on the status of global climate change to provide credible scientific information on climate and its variability.

This year’s issue of the State of Global Climate provides a summary of the state of the climate indicators in 2021, including global temperature trends and their distribution around the globe. The global mean sea level reached a new record high in 2021, while the Antarctic ozone hole reached a maximum area of 24.8 million square kilometres.

Other major findings include an analysis of major drivers of inter-annual climate variability, including the El Niño Southern Oscillation and other Ocean and Atmospheric indices; global precipitation distribution over land; extreme events, including those related to tropical cyclones and wind storms; flooding, drought and extreme heat and cold events. The report also provides the recent findings on climate-related risks and impacts on food security, humanitarian and population displacement aspects, and their impacts on the ecosystem.