Climate emergency: facts & figures

Our Blue Planet is on Fire. This is an emergency. We have to act.

  • 70%

    of coral reefs in some regions have been severely bleached

  • 200 million

    people could be displaced by sea-level rise and extreme weather events by 2100

  • More than 90%

    of the excess heat generated by greenhouse gases has been absorbed by the ocean

Climate emergency in numbers

Read our Ocean & Climate Report

Since the Industrial Revolution, human activity has resulted in a huge rise in emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and sulphur dioxide. These gases remain in the Earth’s atmosphere and trap the sun’s heat, resulting in devastating changes including higher temperatures, melting ice sheets and permafrost, rising sea levels, and more extreme and unpredictable weather.

A stable climate is essential to life on Earth. Runaway climate change will result in many areas becoming uninhabitable due to rising sea levels, drought, food shortages, and extreme weather events. It has been estimated that if global average temperatures rise to 2˚C compared to 1.5˚C, 10 million more people will have to migrate due to sea level rise. (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2019)