Global warming to blame for hottest day in Argentine Antarctica

Global warming is to blame for Argentine Antarctica recording its hottest day since readings began, Greenpeace said on Friday.

Temperatures climbed to 18.3 degrees Celsius (64.9 degrees Fahrenheit) at midday Thursday at the research station Esperanza base, the highest temperature on record since 1961, according to the National Meteorological Service.

The previous record stood at 17.5 degrees on March 24, 2015.

The new record is "of course shocking but unfortunately not surprising because Antarctica is warming up with the rest of the planet," said Frida Bengtsson, marine environment specialist for Greenpeace, in a statement.

At Marambio, another Argentine base in Antarctica, temperatures reached 14.1 degrees Celsius on Thursday, the hottest temperature for a day in February since 1971.

The news comes after a decade of record temperatures on the planet and a 2019 that was the second hottest year since registers have been kept.

And the new decade has begun along the same tendency, with last month the hottest January on record.

The effects of global warming have already seen ocean levels rise due to melting ice caps.

The two largest ice caps on the planet, in Antarctica and Greenland, have already lost an average of a combined 430 billion tons a year since 2006.

According to UN climate experts, the oceans rose 15 centimeters during the 20th century.

It's a threat to coastal towns and small islands the world over.

One of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is the Thwaites glacier, which is the size of Britain.

Scientists say that if it melted it would raise sea levels by 65 centimeters.

"Over the last 30 years, the amount of ice melting off Thwaites and adjacent glaciers has nearly doubled," said the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration group of scientists in a statement.

Argentina has had a presence in Antarctica for the past 114 years, including several scientific research bases, and is also a signatory of the Antarctic Treaty, which came into force in June 1961 and prohibits any militarization of the continent.

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YouTube steers viewers to climate denial videos: US activist group

YouTube has driven millions of viewers to climate denial videos, a US activist group said Thursday as it called for stopping "free promotion of misinformation" at the platform.

New York-based Avaaz said it scrutinized results of Google-owned YouTube searches using the terms "global warming," "climate change," and "climate manipulation" to see what was offered by an "up next" feature and as suggestions.

In response to the report, YouTube said it downplays "borderline" video content while spotlighting authoritative sources and displaying information boxes on searches related to climate change and other topics.

The video sharing platform has remained firm that while it removes content violating its policies against hate, violence and scams, it does not censor ideas expressed in accordance with its rules.

"Our recommendations systems are not designed to filter or demote videos or channels based on specific perspectives," YouTube said in response to an AFP inquiry.

The company added that it has "significantly invested in reducing recommendations of borderline content and harmful misinformation, and raising up authoritative voices."

According to Avaaz, 16 percent of the top 100 videos served up in relation to the term "global warming" contained misinformation, with the top 10 of those averaging more than a million views each.

The portion of potentially misleading videos climbed to 21 percent for YouTube searches on the term "climate manipulation" but fell to eight percent for searches using the term "climate change," according to Avaaz.

"This is not about free speech, this is about the free advertising," Avaaz senior campaigner Julie Deruy said in a release.

"YouTube is giving factually inaccurate videos that risk confusing people about one of the biggest crises of our time," she added.

Discovering the algorithm

An AFP search at YouTube using the term "global warming" yielded a results page topped by a box containing a Wikipedia summary of the subject and a link to the page at the online encyclopedia.

A list of suggested videos on the topic was dominated by sources such as National Geographic, NASA, TED and major news organizations including CBS, PBS, Sky News, and AFP.

Last year, consumption on "channels" of authoritative news publishers at the platform grew by 60 percent, according to YouTube.

"We prioritize authoritative voices for millions of news and information queries, and surface information panels on topics prone to misinformation -- including climate change -- to provide users with context alongside their content," YouTube said.

Avaaz called on YouTube to yank climate change misinformation videos from its recommendation formula completely, and make certain such content doesn't make money from ads at the platform.

The nonprofit also wants YouTube to collaborate with fact-checkers and post correction notices on videos with false climate change information.

YouTube automatically placed ads on some of the videos containing misinformation regarding climate change, making money for the service and the content creators, according to Avaaz.

This could apply to news videos expressing rival sides of the climate change debate. YouTube works with advertisers and provides tools to opt-out of having their ads displayed with certain types of content, such as climate change discourse.

Avaaz said after seeing the YouTube response that the company's rankings lacked transparency and "put a blackbox around their algorithm preventing researchers and investigators from seeing exactly what is happening inside."

"The bottom line is that YouTube should not feature, suggest, promote, advertise or lead users to misinformation," Deruy said.

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Climate champions Thunberg and Attenborough join forces to push for change

BARCELONA - Two titan climate campaigners, Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, joined forces on Monday to push politicians and businesses to step up action on climate change after a year in which schoolchildren took to the world's streets in protest.

Swedish teen activist Thunberg, who turns 17 this week, said 2019 had been "a very strange year" as millions of young people skipped school to demonstrate over slow progress on tackling climate change, inspired by her weekly vigils at the Swedish parliament.

British naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough, 93, said Thunberg had "aroused the world" about the urgency of reining in global warming, achieving things that people who had worked on the problem for 20-odd years had not.

Attenborough - famous for his TV series showing the impact of environmental degradation on flora and fauna - said he had flagged the need for changes to political structures and daily lives two decades ago, but "no one took a blind bit of notice".

Thunberg urged people to "read up" about climate science and what is being done - or not - to tackle the problem. "We climate activists are being listened to - but that doesn't mean that what we are saying is translated into action," she told BBC Radio 4's Today show on which she was guest editor.

"It needs to be a big shift, and that's what we are waiting for - this tipping point," said Thunberg who has Asperger's syndrome and has also suffered from depression in the past.

Attenborough said it was depressing when governments in the United States, Brazil or Australia indicated they were not taking any notice of what should be done.

"It needs a real electric shock - such as you have produced socially - to bring them to their senses, and let's hope that shock will go on," Attenborough told Thunberg on the Today show.

Thunberg has transformed over the past year from an unknown, solo campaigner to the figurehead of a global movement, winning a list of accolades and awards along the way including being named Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2019 for her work.

Her father Svante explained how he and his wife had changed their lives as their daughter found out about climate science.

He said Greta did not eat for three months, nor speak to people outside her family at one stage, but becoming a climate activist had enabled her to recover and become a happy teenager who "dances around" and "laughs a lot".

The family has since become vegan and no longer uses planes, instead sailing across the Atlantic this year to attend a U.N. climate action summit in New York and then sailing to Spain for December's global climate talks in Madrid.

"I didn't do it to save the climate, I did it to save my child," said her father.

Both Thunberg and Attenborough called on politicians to ensure next year's U.N. climate talks in Scotland produce a successful outcome, with governments due to strengthen their national plans to combat climate change.

The annual conference in Madrid this month was viewed as disappointing, with large carbon-polluting countries resisting pressure to step up their targets to reduce emissions.

"We, and they, must do everything they can to make sure that it doesn't fail and that we succeed in bringing the science into the conversation," Thunberg said. 

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Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg is Time's Person of the Year

NEW YORK -  Greta Thunberg, the teen activist from Sweden who has urged immediate action to address a global climate crisis, was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2019 on Wednesday.

Thunberg, 16, was lauded by Time for starting an environmental campaign in August 2018 which became a global movement, initially skipping school and camping out in front of the Swedish Parliament to demand action.

"In the 16 months since, she has addressed heads of state at the U.N., met with the Pope, sparred with the President of the United States and inspired 4 million people to join the global climate strike on September 20, 2019, in what was the largest climate demonstration in human history," the magazine said.

"Margaret Atwood compared her to Joan of Arc. After noticing a hundredfold increase in its usage, lexicographers at Collins Dictionary named Thunberg’s pioneering idea, climate strike, the word of the year," Time said.

Thunberg, who turns 17 in January, continues to beat the drum, saying in Madrid last week that the voices of climate strikers are being heard but politicians are still not taking action.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Toby Chopra and Nick Zieminski)

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Fix climate crisis because Earth is all we’ve got, Nobel Prize winner says

STOCKHOLM - Fix the climate crisis and save the Earth, one of this year's Nobel laureates for physics urged on Saturday, saying the idea of humans escaping our planet to live in other solar systems was farfetched and unrealistic.

Swiss astronomer Didier Queloz, who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering planets orbiting distant suns, said he had heard the argument against fighting climate change because 'it doesn't matter because anyway we're going to leave the Earth at some point'.

"I think this is just irresponsible ... because the stars are so far away, I think we should not really have any hope, serious hope, to escape the Earth," Queloz said at a news conference in Stockholm where he is to collect his share of the 9-million-Swedish-crown ($910,000) prize next week.

"So we better spend our time and energy trying to fix it than trying to imagine that we will ... destroy it and leave it," he said.

Some scientists, including late cosmologist and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, have said threats such as nuclear war and climate change are so serious humans may have to eventually leave the Earth in order to survive as a species.

Briton Stanley Whittingham, awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for Chemistry along with American John Goodenough and Akira Yoshino of Japan for inventing the lithium-ion battery, said a pragmatic approach was needed to the climate crisis.

"We've got to do things step-wise and have some solutions in mind," he said at the same event. "I think lithium batteries are going to help electrification of transportation, including big trucks, and in the US it's already helping solar and wind take over from coal power plants."

The prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were created and funded in the will of Swedish dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel and have been awarded since 1901. This year's award ceremony and banquet is on Dec. 10.

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Runaway warming could sink fishing and reef tourism, researchers warn

LONDON - Countries from Egypt to Mexico could lose 95 percent of their income from coral reef tourism, and parts of West Africa could see their ocean fisheries decline by 85 percent by the turn of the century if planet-warming emissions continue to rise, oceans experts warned Friday.

"Action in reducing emissions really needs to be taken, or we will be facing very important impacts" on oceans and people, said Elena Ojea, one of the authors of a new paper looking at the potential impacts of climate change on ocean economies.

The study, released at the UN climate negotiations in Madrid, was commissioned by the leaders of 14 countries with ocean-dependent economies, and looked at ocean fisheries and seafood cultivation industries, and coral reef tourism.

It found that reef tourism, a nearly $36-billion-a-year industry today, could see more than 90 percent losses globally by 2100 under a high-emissions scenario.

Countries particularly dependent on coral reef tourism - Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Thailand and Australia - could see income cut by 95 percent, the paper noted.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, an ocean expert at Australia's University of Queensland and one of paper's authors, said his country's Great Barrier Reef tourism industry - worth billions a year - was already seeing losses as corals bleached and died.

Ojea, of Spain's University of Vigo, said the 30 million people directly employed in ocean fishing each year also "will be heavily affected" as fish struggle with hotter and more acidic oceans and move to new ranges or die.

She said the problem was most serious in equatorial regions, with some West African nations, in particular, facing "very huge losses" by the end of the century if emissions rise well beyond the 2 degree Celsius limit set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

But some cooler areas of the planet could see a rise in local fish stocks as fish move to cooler waters, she said.

Efforts to adapt fisheries to changing conditions and better manage them, alongside stronger efforts to curb climate change, could cut expected losses, however, said Timothy Fitzgerald, director of the US-based Environmental Defense Fund's Fishery Solutions Center.

"We know the most well-managed fisheries are also the most resilient to climate change," he told journalists at an event on the sidelines of the UN talks.

Vidar Helgesen, Norway's special envoy to the 14-nation High-Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, said the paper should send a "very strong message to the world" on the need to act swiftly to prevent growing ocean-related losses.

The report builds on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's findings that climate-related damage to oceans is likely to cost the global economy nearly $430 billion by 2050, and close to $2 trillion by 2100.

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Investors step up pressure on global energy watchdog over climate change

LONDON/BRUSSELS - Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), faced renewed pressure on Monday from investors and scientists concerned about climate change to overhaul the agency's projections for fossil fuel demand.

Pension funds, insurers and large companies were among 65 signatories of a joint letter to Birol, seen by Reuters, urging him to do more to support the implementation of the 2015 Paris Agreement to avert catastrophic global warming.

"The year 2020 marks a turning point for the world — the year when we either grasp the challenges and opportunities before us, or continue delaying and obstructing the low-carbon transformation," the letter said.

The letter represented the first coordinated response by investors, scientists and campaigners pushing Birol to rethink the Paris-based organization's flagship annual outlook since the latest edition was launched on Nov. 13.

Known as the World Energy Outlook, the document, which runs to hundreds of pages, helps shape expectations in financial markets over how quickly the world could transition from a fossil fuel-dominated energy system to cleaner sources of power.

Since the start of this year, various networks of institutional investors, asset owners, scientists and climate advocacy groups have been urging Birol to change the way the report is produced and presented.

These critics argue that a revised approach could unlock faster investment in renewables and better identify possible risks to the value of oil, gas and coal companies posed by the prospect of rapid action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The IEA made several changes to the last edition of the outlook, including providing what officials describe as a more "stringent" scenario showing how the world could fully achieve the goals of the Paris agreement than in the previous edition.

On Monday, Birol said on the sidelines of a panel discussion in Brussels that his organisation welcomed feedback.

"We have received several comments and letters from around the world and we are very, very happy about that," Birol told Reuters. "It brings more responsibility to the IEA as we are shaping the global energy debate."

'FULLY TRANSPARENT'

In interviews with Reuters earlier this month, Birol and other senior IEA officials argued that much of the criticism of the outlook was based on misunderstandings over how its scenarios work and what they aim to demonstrate.

Birol also emphasised that the IEA's wide-ranging research on topics from energy efficiency to offshore wind played an important role in tackling climate change.

Nevertheless, in the letter, sent earlier on Monday, signatories described the new elements in the latest outlook as "minor improvements" that should not be mistaken for delivering "urgently needed substantial changes."

Signatories are not satisfied, in particular, with the IEA's work to map out a pathway for achieving the most ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement and urged the organisation to produce a "fully transparent" scenario for doing so.

That would include reliably limiting the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times without banking on early stage technologies to suck carbon from the air, and reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The signatories want a revised scenario for achieving these targets to form the centrepiece of the next outlook.

Signatories included German insurer Allianz, Switzerland's Zurich Insurance Group, Danish fund PensionDanmark, Unilever, IKEA, Nordea Life & Pension and Danish utility Ørsted, according to a copy of the letter seen by Reuters.

Climate scientists based in the United States and Europe, former U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres and Michelle Bachelet, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, also signed.

In a statement emailed to Reuters on Saturday, the IEA said it carefully considered the many comments it received.

"As science, technologies, markets, policies, and costs evolve each year, we take those changes into account in our analysis. We will do so again as we prepare for next year's edition of the World Energy Outlook," the IEA said. 

(Reporting by Matthew Green; Additional Reporting by Jonas Ekblom in Brussels; Carolyn Cohn, Tom Sims and Stine Jacobsen; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Jane Merriman)

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Flood, fire and plague: Climate change blamed for disasters

SINGAPORE - Extreme floods in Venice, fires in Australia and even an outbreak of plague in China have been attributed to climate change this week, while researchers have warned that global warming could saddle future generations with life-long illness.

Venice declared a state of emergency on Wednesday after "apocalyptic" floods swept through the lagoon city, flooding its historic basilica and inundating squares and centuries-old buildings.

"This is the result of climate change," city mayor Luigi Brugnaro said on Twitter.

City thoroughfares were turned into raging torrents, stone balustrades were shattered, boats tossed ashore and gondolas smashed against their moorings as the lagoon tide peaked at 187 centimeters.

It was the highest since the record 194 centimeters set in 1966, but rising water levels are becoming a regular threat to the tourist jewel.

"Venice is on its knees," said Brugnaro. "The damage will run into hundreds of millions of euros."

On the other side of the world, parts of Australia have been ravaged by wild bushfires this week, with four people killed and communities forced to flee the flames.

Since 2016, parts of northern and inland New South Wales, along with southern Queensland, have been in a drought that the Bureau of Meteorology says is being driven, in part, by warmer sea-surface temperatures affecting rainfall patterns.

Air temperatures have also warmed over the past century, increasing the ferocity of droughts and fires.

But links between climate change and extreme weather events have become a political football in Australia.

The coal-industry supporting government accepts the need to cut emissions while arguing that stronger environmental action would cripple its economy.

That pits the country against its Pacific island neighbors which are particularly susceptible to warmer temperatures and rising seas.

Globally, concern about effective action has surged since U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the international Paris Accord on climate change and took steps to dismantle environmental protections.

Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro are among the world's only leaders who publicly question the science of climate change, despite devastating fires in their countries - in California and the Amazon basin - that environmentalists at least partly blame on global warming.

PLAGUE

While the politicians argue, concern is growing about the impact on health of a warmer world.

In China, health officials have reported a rare outbreak of pneumonic plague after two cases were confirmed this week in Beijing.

The two were infected in the province of Inner Mongolia, where rodent populations have expanded dramatically after persistent droughts, worsened by climate change, state media said.

An area the size of the Netherlands was hit by a "rat plague" last summer.

The wider implications for health are sobering.

The Lancet medical journal published a study this week saying climate change was already harming people's health by increasing the number of extreme weather events and exacerbating air pollution.

A warmer world brings risks of food shortages, infectious diseases, floods, and extreme heat.

If nothing is done, the impacts could burden an entire generation with disease and illness throughout their lives, researchers said.

"Children are particularly vulnerable to the health risks of a changing climate. Their bodies and immune systems are still developing, leaving them more susceptible to disease and environmental pollutants," said Nick Watts, one of those who led the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change study.

Health damage in early childhood is "persistent and pervasive," he warned, bringing lifelong consequences.

"Without immediate action from all countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions, gains in wellbeing and life expectancy will be compromised, and climate change will come to define the health of an entire generation," he told a London briefing.

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Five-year period ending 2019 set to be hottest on record

UNITED NATIONS, United States - A damning new UN report published Sunday said the world is falling badly behind in the race to avert climate disaster because of runaway warming, with the five-year period ending 2019 set to be the hottest ever.

It comes ahead of a major UN climate summit Monday that will be attended by more than 60 world leaders, as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pushes for countries to increase their greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The report "highlights the urgent need for the development of concrete actions that halt global warming and the worst effects of climate change," said its authors, the Science Advisory Group to the summit. 

Average global temperature between 2015-2019 is on track to be the hottest of any five-year period on record, according to the report compiled by the World Meteorological Organization.

The period "is currently estimated to be 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial (1850-1900) times and 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer than 2011-2015," it said.

The past four years were already the hottest since record-keeping began in 1850.

Guterres said last week the world was "losing the race" on climate change, and the latest report spells out the extent to which the gap between what is required and what is happening is widening.

Rather than falling, carbon dioxide grew two percent in 2018, reaching a record high of 37 billion tonnes.

More importantly, there is also no sign yet of reaching what is known as "peak emissions," the point at which levels will start to fall, though these are not growing at the same rate as the global economy.

The 2015 Paris Agreement saw countries lay out national targets to reduce their emissions in order to limit long term temperature rise by under two degrees Celsius or ideally 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

These are benchmarks that will limit in important ways the impact of warming on world weather systems.

But even if all countries meet the goals they set themselves, the world will warm by 2.9 degrees Celsius to 3.4 degrees Celsius, the report found.

The current levels of ambition would need to be tripled to meet the two degrees Celsius goal and increased five-fold to meet the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal -- technically still possible.

"This reads like a credit card statement after a five-year long spending binge," said Dave Reay, a professor and chair in Carbon Management at the University of Edinburgh.

"Our global carbon credit is maxed out," he added. "If emissions don't start falling there will be hell to pay."

- Deadly Heatwaves -

In 2018, global carbon dioxide was 407.8 parts per million (ppm), 2.2 ppm higher than 2017 and set to reach or exceed 410 ppm by 2019.

"The last time Earth's atmosphere contained 400 parts per million CO 2 was about 3-5 million years ago," the report said. 

At that time, global mean surface temperatures were two-to-three degrees Celsius warmer, ice sheets at both poles had melted, and seas were 10 to 20 meters higher.

Other major takeaways include that the extent of Arctic summer sea ice has declined at a rate of 12 percent per decade over the past 40 years, with the four lowest values between 2015 and 2019.

Overall, the amount of ice lost from the Antarctic ice sheet increased by a factor of six each year between 1979 and 2017, while glacier loss for 2015-19 is also the highest for any five-year period on record.

Sea-level rise is also accelerating as is the process of acidification.

The report also found that heatwaves were the deadliest weather hazard in the 2015-19 period, affecting all continents and setting new national temperature records. 

The summer of 2019, which included the hottest ever month on record, July, saw unprecedented wildfires in the Arctic. 

In June, these were responsible for emitting 50 megatons of carbon dioxide.

The report also comes at a time of increasing mobilization over the question of climate change, with millions taking part in a youth-led global strike Friday, before the first UN youth climate summit on Saturday.

On Sunday, 87 major companies with a combined market share of $2.3 trillion committed to set climate targets in line with the 1.5 C goal.

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'We are losing the race' on climate catastrophe, warns UN chief

WASHINGTON - UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday the world was "losing the race" to avert climate disaster, but that greenhouse gas reduction targets were not out of reach yet.

He was speaking during an interview with the Covering Climate Now coalition of media, which includes AFP, days before a UN youth climate summit that will be followed by a meeting with world leaders, where he will urge countries to raise their commitments set under the Paris agreement.

The landmark accord saw countries pledge to limit the long-term rise in the average temperature of the Earth to two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels, and if possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

"What I want is to have the whole of society putting pressure on governments to make governments understand they need to run faster, because we are losing the race," he said, adding: "What the science tells us today is that these targets are still reachable."

Guterres said that inaction by some key countries, including the US, could be at least partly offset by action at the sub-national level, for example in the carbon neutral pledges made by the states of California and New York.

"I think one of the best things of the US society is the fact that it is a federal country... that decisions are decentralized, so I will be always very strongly in favor of keeping decisions on climate change as decentralized as possible," he said.

He noted that major cities, regions and businesses were taking over, and that banks and investment funds were pulling out of the coal and fossil fuel sectors.

Guterres also cited the example of the European Union, where only three countries now oppose the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, and said that he felt a "new wind" in the push for renewable energy, especially with the growth of solar in India and China.

Failure to meet the goals laid out under the Paris agreement could lead to the crossing of so-called "tipping points" such as the thawing of the Earth's permafrost that further accelerate warming, creating a situation where extreme weather events become the norm.

Guterres said he was heartened by growing societal awareness, which meant that hope was not yet lost, "but that requires profound changes in the way we produce food, in the way we power our economies, in the way we organize our cities, in the way we produce energy."

"I feel that more and more people, companies, cities, and governments, are understanding that needs to be done," he said.

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Amazon burning: Brazil reports record forest fires

BRASILIA - Wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest have hit a record number this year, with 72,843 fires detected so far by Brazil's space research center INPE, as concerns grow over right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro's environmental policy.

The surge marks an 83 percent increase over the same period of 2018, the agency said on Tuesday, and is the highest since records began in 2013.

Since Thursday, INPE said satellite images spotted 9,507 new forest fires in the country, mostly in the Amazon basin, home to the world's largest tropical forest seen as vital to countering global warming.

Images show the northernmost state of Roraima covered in dark smoke. Amazonas declared an emergency in the south of the state and in its capital Manaus on Aug. 9. Acre, on the border with Peru, has been on environmental alert since Friday due to the fires.

Wildfires have increased in Mato Grosso and Para, two states where Brazil's agricultural frontier has pushed into the Amazon basin and spurred deforestation. Wildfires are common in the dry season, but are also deliberately set by farmers illegally deforesting land for cattle ranching.

The unprecedented surge in wildfires has occurred since Bolsonaro took office in January vowing to develop the Amazon region for farming and mining, ignoring international concern over increased deforestation.

Asked about the spread of uncontrolled fires, Bolsonaro brushed off criticism, saying it was the time of the year of the "queimada" or burn, when farmers use fire to clear land.

"I used to be called Captain Chainsaw. Now I am Nero, setting the Amazon aflame. But it is the season of the queimada," he told reporters.

Space agency INPE, however, said the large number of wildfires could not be attributed to the dry season or natural phenomena alone.

"There is nothing abnormal about the climate this year or the rainfall in the Amazon region, which is just a little below average," said INPE researcher Alberto Setzer.

People frequently blame the dry season for the wildfires in the Amazon, but that is not quite accurate, he said.

"The dry season creates the favorable conditions for the use and spread of fire, but starting a fire is the work of humans, either deliberately or by accident," Setzer said.

Bolsonaro recently fired the director of INPE after he criticized agency statistics showing an increase in deforestation in Brazil, saying they were inaccurate.

"I am waiting for the next set of numbers, that will not be made up numbers. If they are alarming, I will take notice of them in front of you," he told reporters.

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Iceland commemorates first glacier lost to climate change

REYKJAVIK - Iceland on Sunday honored the passing of Okjokull, its first glacier lost to climate change, as scientists warn that some 400 others on the subarctic island risk the same fate. 

As the world recently marked the warmest July ever on record, a bronze plaque was mounted on a bare rock in a ceremony on the former glacier in western Iceland, attended by local researchers and their peers at Rice University in the United States who initiated the project. 

Iceland's Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson also attended the event, as well as hundreds of scientists, journalists and members of the public who trekked to the site.

"I hope this ceremony will be an inspiration not only to us here in Iceland but also for the rest of the world, because what we are seeing here is just one face of the climate crisis," Jakobsdottir told AFP.

The plaque bears the inscription "A letter to the future", and is intended to raise awareness about the decline of glaciers and the effects of climate change.

"In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it," the plaque reads.

It is also labelled "415 ppm CO2", referring to the record level of carbon dioxide measured in the atmosphere last May.

The plaque is "the first monument to a glacier lost to climate change anywhere in the world", Cymene Howe, associate professor of anthropology at Rice University, said in July.

"Memorials everywhere stand for either human accomplishments, like the deeds of historic figures, or the losses and deaths we recognize as important," she said.

"By memorializing a fallen glacier, we want to emphasize what is being lost -- or dying -- the world over, and also draw attention to the fact that this is something that humans have 'accomplished', although it is not something we should be proud of."

Howe noted that the conversation about climate change can be abstract, with many dire statistics and sophisticated scientific models that can feel incomprehensible.

"Perhaps a monument to a lost glacier is a better way to fully grasp what we now face," she said, highlighting "the power of symbols and ceremony to provoke feelings".

'Pretty visual'

Julien Weiss, an aerodynamics professor at the University of Berlin who attended Sunday's ceremony with his wife and seven-year-old daughter, was one of those moved by seeing the ex-glacier Sunday.

"Seeing a glacier disappear is something you can feel, you can understand it and it's pretty visual," he told AFP.

"You don't feel climate change daily, it's something that happens very slowly on a human scale, but very quickly on a geological scale."

Iceland loses about 11 billion tonnes of ice per year, and scientists fear all of the island's 400-plus glaciers will be gone by 2200, according to Howe.

Glaciers cover about 11 percent of the country's surface.

"A big part of our renewable energy is produced in the glacial rivers.... The disappearance of the glaciers will affect our energy system," Prime Minister Jakobsdottir said.

Stripped in 2014 

Glaciologists stripped Okjokull of its glacier status in 2014, a first for Iceland.

In 1890, the glacier ice covered 16 square kilometers (6.2 square miles) but by 2012, it measured just 0.7 square kilometers, according to a report from the University of Iceland from 2017.

In 2014, "we made the decision that this was no longer a living glacier, it was only dead ice, it was not moving," Oddur Sigurdsson, a glaciologist with the Icelandic Meteorological Office, told AFP.

To have the status of a glacier, the mass of ice and snow must be thick enough to move by its own weight. For that to happen the mass must be approximately 40 to 50 meters (130 to 165 feet) thick, he said.

According to a study published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in April, nearly half of the world's heritage sites could lose their glaciers by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate. 

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Climate change seen posing threat to global peace in next 10 years

LONDON - Climate change poses a threat to peace in countries around the world in the coming decade, according to an annual peace index released on Wednesday that factored in the risk from global warming for the first time.

Nearly a billion people live in areas at high risk from global warming and about 40% of them are in countries already struggling with conflict, said the Australia-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

Climate change causes conflict due to competition over diminishing resources and may also threaten livelihoods and force mass migration, it said.

"Going forward, climate change is going to be a substantial problem," Steve Killelea, executive chairman of the IEP, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"We can actually get a much better idea of which countries are most at risk, what are the types of risk and what would be the level of impact before it leads to a break or an implosion within the country."

In 2019, the world became very slightly more peaceful for the first time in five years, said the IEP, which used data from groups including think tanks, research institutes, governments and universities to compile the index.

However, it remains significantly less peaceful than 10 years ago due to factors including conflicts in the Middle East, a rise in terrorism, and increasing numbers of refugees.

The index assigns each country a score between one and five, where one is the most peaceful and five is the least, based on 23 indicators ranging from homicide levels to weapons imports.

The effects of climate change can create a "tipping point", exacerbating tensions until a breaking point is reached, particularly in countries that are already struggling, said Killelea.

Tackling entrenched conflicts may also help countries cooperate better on global warming, he said.

"Unless we have a world which is basically peaceful, it will be impossible to get the levels of trust and cooperation necessary to solve these problems," he said.

Experts at global research organisation the World Resources Institute praised the inclusion of climate change as a factor in conflict risk.

"We know that environmental degradation and water stress can lead to hunger, famine and displacement, and combined with economic and political instability, can lead to migration and conflict," said Manish Bapna, managing director of the WRI.

"The fact that climate change is now part of the Global Peace Index underscores how multi-faceted this threat is and how quickly we need to act."

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World's biggest firms foresee $1 trillion climate cost hit

LONDON - More than 200 of the world's largest listed companies forecast that climate change could cost them a combined total of almost $1 trillion, with much of the pain due in the next five years, according to a report published on Tuesday.

Even so, the findings by charity CDP suggested many companies still underestimated the dangers as scientists warn that earth's climate system is on course to hit catastrophic tipping points without rapid cuts in carbon emissions.

"Most companies still have a long way to go in terms of properly assessing climate risk," said Nicolette Bartlett, CDP's director of climate change, who authored the report.

Founded in the early 2000s, CDP - formerly known as Carbon Disclosure Project - is a respected voice in a growing coalition of pressure groups, fund managers, central bankers and politicians who believe global warming poses a systemic risk to the financial system.

By pushing chief executives to confront risks to their operations, advocates of greater disclosure hope to spur enough investment in cleaner industries to cut carbon emissions in time to meet global climate goals.

In its latest study, CDP analysed survey data from 215 of the largest companies, ranging from Apple and Microsoft to Unilever, UBS, Nestle, China Mobile, Infosys, Sony and BHP.

The companies anticipated a total of $970 billion in extra costs due to factors including hotter temperatures, chaotic weather, and pricing of greenhouse gas emissions. About half of these costs were seen as "likely to virtually certain."

Many companies also saw a huge potential upside if the world can de-carbonize in time to avert the bleakest climate scenarios, which scientists see as an existential risk to industrial civilization.

The companies in the CDP study, which have a combined market capitalization of roughly $17 trillion, saw potential opportunities worth $2.1 trillion, spanning faster-than-expected demand for electric vehicles to investments in renewables.

THE GREAT TRANSITION

Investor concerns over climate risk have risen sharply in parallel with an upsurge in climate activism in many countries as the heat waves, droughts, wildfires and super-storms fueled by climate change have become harder to ignore.

In April, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney and Francois Villeroy de Galhau, head of the French central bank, warned of the risk of a climate-driven "Minsky moment" – a sudden collapse in asset prices - unless business embraced greater disclosure.

The CDP aligns its questionnaires with the reporting requirements of the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, a voluntary initiative launched by the G20 in 2015, which is due to publish a status report on Wednesday.

British-based CDP acknowledges its research cannot provide a perfect snapshot of companies' thinking since a lack of mandatory reporting requirements on climate risk means it has to rely on whatever figures executives are willing to share.

The charity argues, however, that the degree to which companies are willing to engage provides a yardstick to judge the relative transparency of different sectors and generates peer pressure for greater disclosure.

Although no sector was entirely transparent on climate risk, financial services companies tended to be among the most forthcoming respondents, CDP said, accounting for about 70-80 per cent of the estimated costs and opportunities.

Fossil fuel companies who submitted responses to the study reported $140 billion of potential opportunities in the drive towards a low-carbon economy - more than five times the $25 billion value of the risks they identified, CDP said.

With climate action focused on limiting the burning of coal, oil and gas, CDP urged investors to question why fossil players seemed so confident of benefiting from an energy transition that would render their existing business models obsolete.

"The financial sector seems to be identifying more risks than the real economy," said Pedro Faria, a strategic advisor to CDP. "This raises the question: who is managing these risks?"

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Record heatwave across Northern Hemisphere

From the Arctic Circle and Scandinavia to California, Japan and North Africa, an exceptional heatwave has been sweeping across the Northern Hemisphere for several weeks, setting record high temperatures and causing drought and wildfires.

Meteorologists say the summer weather conditions are a result of climate change.

"2018 is shaping up to be one of the hottest years on record, with new temperature records in many countries," said Elena Manaenkova, deputy secretary-general of the World Meterological Organisation (WMO).

"This is no surprise," she added. "The heatwaves and extreme heat we are experiencing are consistent with what we expect as a result of climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions. 

"This is not a future scenario. It is happening now.” 

30 C in Arctic Circle

The summer weather in the north of Europe has been especially unusual with the thermostat in the Arctic Circle hitting 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).

Record temperatures were reported in northern Norway at 33 C last week, more than 15 degrees C higher than normal, according to the Norwegian meteorological institute.

Another record in Norway was set at Makkaur on the Barents Sea where the mercury in the land of the midnight sun on July 18 never dropped lower than 25 C.

And near the Arctic Circle at Kvikkjokk in Sweden temperatures climbed to 32.5 C on July 17, while the Finnish Lapland the next day saw 33.4 C, according to Meteo France.

In Russia's Siberia, the mercury hit 37.2 C at Tompo on July 9 and 35.5 C at Vanavara on June 26, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA).

Across Europe

In other parts of Europe, a heatwave has moved across Ireland and the British isles to France, though the temperatures have not set record highs.

Southern European countries, in contrast, have seen summer temperatures lower than normal, according to the WMO.

But the still hot, dry weather triggered wildfires in Greece, claiming at least 82 lives, making them Europe's deadliest this century.

41 C in Japan

In Japan, several dozen people have died in the scorching heat which reached a national record of 41.1 C at Kamagaya on Monday, official data showed.

The same day it reached more than 40 C for the first time in Tokyo's metropolitan region.

African record?

In the Sahara desert of Algeria on July 5, the mercury soared to 51.3 C, which was probably "the highest ever recorded in Algeria by reliable instruments", the WMO said.

It is likely a record for the African continent, since reliable records began, according to Meteo France.

But if the WMO recognises data from Africa's colonial period as reliable, the 55 C temperature reached in Tunisia in 1931 would still be considered as the African record.

Neighbouring Morocco has also seen a new national record temperature at 43.4 C on July 3 at Bouarfa, the WMO said.

And in the Middle East, on the coast of Oman on the Arabian Peninsula, the temperature never fell below 42.6 C, even at night, on June 28, which could be the highest minimal temperature ever registered there, the WMO said.

California's Death Valley

In the United States, California has been under scorching heat, including record temperatures on July 6 of 48.9 C in Chino in the west of the state, and the next day 47.2 C in the Van Nuys neighbourhood of Los Angeles.

At the Furnace Creek station in the Mojave Desert's Death Valley on July 8, the mercury registered 52 C -- still below the 56.7 C hit on July 10, 1913, although the historic world record is contested by some experts.

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Actor DiCaprio says climate action is US's 'biggest economic opportunity'

NEW YORK - Tackling climate change is the "biggest economic opportunity" in the history of the United States, no matter who holds political office, said Hollywood star and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio.

"There are a few, very prominent people that still deny the overwhelming conclusions of the world's scientists that climate change is largely human-caused and needs immediate urgent attention," he told a U.N. awards ceremony on Friday evening.

But "the truth" about climate change has spread like "wildfire", he added.

DiCaprio's comments, as he received a prize for his work as a global citizen, did not refer to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump by name but were a thinly-veiled reference to his views and climate-skeptic cabinet members with oil industry ties.

Earlier this month, 42-year-old DiCaprio and the head of his foundation met with Trump and his team, reportedly arguing that support for renewable energy could create millions of jobs.

Trump has suggested climate change is a hoax and raised the possibility of withdrawing U.S. support for a new global accord to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which most scientists believe are driving up sea-levels and more droughts and violent storms.

"In less than 100 years of our pollution-based prosperity, we humans have put our entire existence in jeopardy," warned DiCaprio, who released his own documentary "Before the Flood" on the impacts of global warming two months ago.

DiCaprio, who won an Oscar this year for playing a fur trapper battling nature's elements in "The Revenant", said his documentary is the most viewed "in history ... (showing) just how much the world cares about the issue of climate change".

But he said the battle to address it is far from over, calling on the world to implement the Paris Agreement on climate change, which came into effect in November, and to "go further".

'ENVIRONMENTAL AWAKENING'

People everywhere are acting to curb the damage to humans, nature and wildlife from a warming planet, DiCaprio said - from putting a price on carbon emissions, to buying cleaner cars, eating less meat, and businesses vowing to be carbon-neutral.

"To those who may be discouraged by nay-sayers, let me remind you, the environmental awakening is all over the world and the progress we have made so far ... has always been because of people, not governments," DiCaprio told the United Nations Correspondents Association event in downtown New York.

DiCaprio, who has worked closely with outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on climate action, congratulated the U.N. chief for "elevating the significance of climate change to one of fundamental global sustainability and peace".

Without Ban Ki-moon's persistence, the world would never have made so much progress on climate change, culminating in the Paris Agreement sealed in December 2015, DiCaprio said.

Earlier on Friday, Ban Ki-moon said acting on climate change meant "jobs, growth, cleaner air and better health", adding that leaders of top companies, governors and mayors understand this.

The Paris Agreement is "a precious achievement that we must support and nurture", he told his final press conference at the United Nations. "There is no going back," he added.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling @meganrowling; Editing by Belinda Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

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Urgent aid needed to fight 'super' El Nino: Oxfam

SYDNEY - Droughts, erratic rains and frosts brought by a super-charged El Nino are severely impacting the Pacific, with Papua New Guinea worst hit, aid group Oxfam said in a report Monday.

Calling for an urgent up-scaling in relief to save lives, the charity said 4.7 million people faced hunger, poverty and disease in the Pacific region as a result of the weather pattern.

"This is a crisis on a huge global scale," the report, "Early Action on Super-charged El Nino Vital to Save Lives", said.

"The current El Nino is one of the strongest ever measured, which means there will be more extreme weather conditions that will threaten people's food security, lives and livelihoods."

El Nino is the name given to a weather pattern associated with a sustained period of warming in the central and eastern tropical Pacific which can spark deadly and costly climate extremes.

Last month, the UN weather agency warned the phenomenon, triggered by a warming in sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, was the worst in more than 15 years.

Oxfam said climate change was super-charging the effects of El Nino and despite a landmark global climate pact reached in Paris on the weekend, much needed to be done rapidly to cut emissions.

It said the result of the current strong El Nino would likely be 40–50 million people globally facing hunger, disease and water shortages in early 2016 as the slow onset crisis plays out.

The worst-affected places include Papua New Guinea in the Asia-Pacific as well as Ethiopia and Malawi in Africa and Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras in Latin America.

"Papua New Guinea has been severely affected, particularly in the Highlands, with widespread drought and frost affecting up to three million people and destroying crops and livestock," it said.

"Drought has also affected Vanuatu, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Samoa and Tonga, damaging crops and water supplies."

Because El Nino also increases the probability of a longer tropical cyclone season in the southern hemisphere, countries in the eastern Pacific such as the Cook Islands and Samoa may also be at risk of strong storms, it said.

Across Asia monsoon rains have been limited, with Indonesia worst affected, while the forecast for the Philippines is also poor, with 85 percent of the country expected to be in drought by March 2016, it added.

Oxfam said in Ethiopia some 8.2 million people currently needed support due to a lack of rainfall while huge areas of southern Africa were also in drought.

In Central America and Haiti, small farmers and day labourers are the worst affected, with the potential for greater drought and major flooding in South America.

"The warning bells are deafening. We must act now to save lives and prevent people falling further into poverty," said Oxfam Australia's humanitarian manager Meg Quartermaine.

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Tasked with saving humanity, climate envoys can't stay awake

LE BOURGET, France - They have been tasked with saving humanity but, as UN climate talks went into much-feared overtime on Friday, many exhausted envoys could barely stay awake.

Thousands of negotiators have spent nearly a fortnight at a sprawling conference venue on the outskirts of the French capital trying to forge the world's first effective universal accord to curb global warming.

With the Friday deadline come and gone and the 195 nations still deeply divided, a third consecutive night of non-stop talks was scheduled -- turning the event into a test of physical endurance as much as diplomacy.

Their sustenance: caffeine, adrenaline, hope... and more caffeine.

"Coffee always helps. This is the only time when I drink coffee," said South African Maesela Kekana, a veteran negotiator to the annual United Nations climate talks, which are notorious for running into overtime.

"You can't survive without coffee. And we help each other. We bring each other coffee."

Guyanese Minister of Governance Raphael Trotman said on Friday afternoon he had just six hours' sleep over the previous two nights, but was not feeling too weary.

"There is a bit of adrenaline and a lot of coffee," Trotman told AFP, adding that the most powerful source of energy was feeling he may be part of making history if an accord is reached on Saturday.

"Hope and expectation are what drives you. And you draw strength from just seeing the delegates from other countries (feeling the same)."

Still, Trotman admitted he had seen some other delegates "nod off" in meetings.

Other negotiators could be seen lying on couches in the public areas of the halls with shoes off, eye-masks on, grabbing a precious hour or two of rest.

- Foggy minds -

Espen Ronneberg, 49, a negotiator for the Pacific island nation of Samoa and a veteran of 17 editions of the UN talks, said fatigue was having an impact on people's ability to think clearly.

"We're all tired and we've become much less diplomatic," Ronneberg said as he looked around the airport hangar-style halls housing the national delegation offices through eyes nearly closed with fatigue.

"Instead, we just go straight to the point. Some people don't even say: 'Hello' anymore, they just nod their heads."

Naomi Klein, a famous Canadian journalist and activist with observer status at the talks, said the endless negotiations favoured the most powerful nations with the biggest delegations that could share the workload.

"We can see the negotiators are not sleeping a lot. Really, their judgement is not that great. And small countries that have small delegations sleep even less, because they have less staff," she said.

Ronneberg said Samoa tried to rotate its forces to keep them fresh.

"We've been trying to send people home," he said, referring to hotels.

"But that's not working, because it takes around one hour for them to get there. So people are just basically sleeping in the offices."

Still, Djordjije Vulikic, part of a relatively small delegation with Montenegro, insisted the fatigue was not impacting his work.

"There is this suspense, you never know what will happen at the end. So you don't feel it now," Vulikic said -- although he added he had been dreaming about what he would do when an agreement was signed.

"I will spend an entire two days sleeping."

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Climate-change naysayers better at war of words, study finds

NEW YORK - Climate-change opponents are better at spreading their point of view than those who see climate change as real and troublesome, according to a study underlining the challenge of rallying public support as world leaders meet in Paris to discuss the environmental threat.

The naysayers did well at changing the minds of both liberal and conservative Americans in a study of about 1,600 U.S. adults conducted by Michigan State University researchers.

Respondents were asked to read fabricated news articles about climate change.

Half the articles had positive messages, such as the benefits of reducing climate change, while the rest were negative, such as suggesting climate change is exaggerated.

The positive messages had little or no effect on the participants' core beliefs about climate change, but negative messages prompted participants to doubt its existence, the study found.

The study illustrates the influence of climate-change opponents in the United States, said lead investigator Aaron McCright, an associate professor of sociology at Michigan State.

"That's the power of the denial message," McCright told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview. "It's one of these really polarizing emotional topics."

Research shows the vast majority of U.S. adults believe in the existence of climate change and that manmade emissions are warming the planet.

Conservative opponents are typically hostile to policies that might drive a shift to renewable energy from fossil fuels.

A handful of climate-change skeptics have been on hand this week in Paris, where leaders and negotiators from nearly 200 nations are meeting in an effort to hammer out a treaty to combat climate change and move toward a low carbon global economy.

The Michigan State report was published earlier this month online in the journal "Topics in Cognitive Science."

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Protesters push leaders to avert climate catastrophe

PARIS, France - Masses of people joined a worldwide wave of marches on Saturday demanding leaders craft a pact to avert a climate catastrophe when they gather in a still-shaken Paris.

From Australia to New Zealand, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Japan, people rallied at the start of a weekend of popular protests pleading for world powers to overcome the logjams when the UN climate summit officially opens in the French capital Monday.

"Protect our common home," declared placards held aloft as thousands gathered in Melbourne, with those sentiments echoed also on the streets of Johannesburg and Edinburgh.

Some 150 leaders, including US President Barack Obama, China's Xi Jinping, India's Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, will attend the start of the Paris conference, which is tasked with reaching the first truly universal climate pact.

The goal is to limit average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), perhaps less, over pre-Industrial Revolution levels by curbing fossil fuel emissions blamed for climate change.

If they fail, scientists warn of a world that will be increasingly inhospitable to human life, with superstorms, drought and rising sea levels that swamp vast areas of land.

On the eve of Saturday's protests, French President Francois Hollande warned of the obstacles ahead for the 195 nations following more than two decades of bickering.

"Man is the worst enemy of man. We can see it with terrorism," said Hollande, who spoke after leading ceremonies in Paris to mourn the victims of the deadly November 13 bombing and shooting attacks that sowed terror in the French capital.

"But we can say the same when it comes to climate. Human beings are destroying nature, damaging the environment. It is therefore for human beings to face up to their responsibilities for the good of future generations."

- Compromise call -

Potential stumbling blocks in Paris abound, ranging from financing for climate-vulnerable countries to scrutiny of commitments to curb greenhouse gases and even the legal status of the accord.

The last attempt to forge a global deal -- the ill-tempered 2009 Copenhagen summit -- foundered upon divisions between rich and poor countries.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said he was optimistic of success in the talks, which are due to end on December 11, but emphasised all sides must be prepared to compromise.

"I am urging the world leaders that they must agree on the middle ground, there is no such perfect agreement in this world," Ban told France 24 television on Saturday.

Briefing reporters at the summit venue, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius highlighted four key issues still dividing nations but also voiced optimism about success.

He pointed out the number of nations that had submitted plans on how they intended to fight climate change -- a key part of the planned Paris agreement -- had risen to 183 and covered 95 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

"This is extremely good news," he told reporters.

Speaking alongside Fabius, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said the voluntary carbon-curbing pledges would still put Earth on track for warming of between 2.7 and 3.5 C.

While emphasising this was not nearly enough, Figueres said the pledges had moved the world away from warming of up to six degrees.

"That is fundamental progress," she said, adding the Paris agreement could "chart the path" for continued improvement in the years ahead to keep warming to between 1.5 and 2 degrees C.

The diverse group of 53 Commonwealth nations, which represents a third of the world's population, also pledged Saturday to work for an ambitious and legally binding Paris agreement.

Commonwealth leaders issued the statement after holding their biennial summit in Malta, where they also agreed to set up a billion-dollar "Green Finance Facility" for environmental projects.

- Human chain after Paris attacks -
Protest organisers say they expect hundreds of thousands to take to the streets globally this weekend, with rallies planned for Sunday in Seoul, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Kiev and Mexico City.

In Paris, French authorities cancelled two demonstrations following the onslaught by gunmen and suicide bombers which killed 130 people at restaurant terraces, a concert hall and the national stadium on November 13.

People rallying this weekend have declared their solidarity with activists unable to rally in Paris with a social media campaign tagged #march4me.

Activists still plan to create a two-kilometre (1.2-mile) human chain along the original march route on Sunday.

They will break the chain as they pass the Bataclan concert hall, where the worst violence claimed 90 lives, as a mark of respect to the victims.

Protesters also plan to leave scores of shoes on Place de la Republique square to symbolise the thousands left frustrated in their plans to march.

In a sign of the urgency of the talks, the start of the climate negotiations themselves, conducted by bureaucrats, were brought forward to Sunday on the eve of the official opening.

The Paris conference will gather some 40,000 people, including 10,000 delegates from 195 countries.

About 2,800 police and soldiers will secure the conference site, and 6,300 others will deploy in Paris.

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