Background

WMO provides a wide range of scientific and technical inputs to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the chief global forum for international collaboration and climate action. As part of this work, WMO submits reports including on the State of the Global Climate and the Greenhouse Gas Bulletin for the Conference of Parties (COP), the Convention’s supreme decision-making body. By promoting and coordinating many of the observing systems and research networks that underpin climate science, WMO highlights the need for governments to address climate change. 

In December 2015, the Parties to the Climate Change Convention adopted the Paris Agreement, setting out a global pathway for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and building climate resilience. The Agreement’s central aim is to keep global mean temperature rise in this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Agreement also aims to strengthen the ability of countries to deal with the impacts of climate change.  The Agreement entered into force on 4 November 2016.