Climate change

Story hook

11 July 2023. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) records a planet-wide daily average surface temperature of 17.08°C — the hottest day in the 174-year instrumental record, possibly the hottest in 125,000 years. The record is broken three more times in the next week. By month-end, July 2023 is declared the hottest month in human history.

A year later — June, July, August 2024 — each becomes, in turn, the hottest of its kind ever recorded. Antarctic sea ice in February 2024 plunges to a record low: 1.5 million km² below the 1979-2010 average. Greenland loses ice mass for the 27th consecutive year. Tuvalu's prime minister addresses COP-28 while standing knee-deep in seawater on his own island.

16 December 2015, in a Paris convention hall, 195 nations had agreed to limit warming "well below 2°C above pre-industrial" with effort toward 1.5°C. We had ~10 years to phase down emissions. A decade later, we have done some of it — solar is now cheapest electricity in human history, EVs are 18% of new car sales, China peaks coal in 2025 — but not enough. The world is on track for 2.5-3.0°C warming by 2100.

Climate change is not a future problem any more. It is a weather report.

Why this matters for UPSC

Syllabus location: GS-I — World Physical Geography (climate change); GS-III — Environment + Disaster Management. Asked 5-6 times in Prelims over the last decade. Mains 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 — every single year. Interview pivotal topic. Highest-yield current-affairs zone.