Sea levels this year posted a record high, making low-lying coastal populations ever more vulnerable to extreme weather like super-storm Haiyan, the UN said Wednesday.
A typhoon victim holds a tissue to block the smell of dead corpses in Tacloban, on the eastern Philippines island of Leyte, on November 13, 2013
In an interim report on the planet's climate, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) also estimated that 2013 was on course to be one of the hottest since records began.
"The Philippines is reeling from the devastation wreaked by Typhoon Haiyan, the most powerful tropical cyclone ever to hit the country and one of the most intense ever recorded anywhere," said Michel Jarraud, the agency's chief.
The deadly typhoon and associated storm surge -- which survivors have likened to a tsunami -- tore through the archipelago last week, killing at least 10,000 people.
The Philippines is still recovering from Typhoon Bopha, which in December 2012 left almost 2,000 people dead or missing, Jarraud noted.
"Although individual tropical cyclones cannot be directly attributed to climate change, higher sea levels are already making coastal populations more vulnerable to storm surges. We saw this with tragic consequences in the Philippines," he said.
Experts say the relationship between climate change and tropical cyclones is still an open question.
Some, though, predict these events will become more powerful and possibly more frequent, too, as as a result of global warming.
"Global sea level reached a new record high during March 2013," the WMO said in its report.
At 3.2 mm (0.12 inches) per year, the current average rise is double the 20th-century trend of 1.6 millimetres (0.06 inches) per year, it said.
The WMO said that in 2012, concentrations of greenhouse gases hit a new high of 393.1 parts per million, a rise of 2.2 parts per million over the previous year and an increase of 41 percent since the start of the Industrial Revolution in 1750.