The climate crisis and growing nuclear threat has pushed the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than at any time in its 73-year history.

Former president of Ireland Mary Robinson joined scientists, Nobel prize-winners and former heads of state in Washington for the annual resetting of the clock, warning the world is closer to extinction level disaster than ever previously recorded.

The clock’s hands were moved forward to “100 seconds to midnight” following assessment by experts from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Their grim conclusion warned threats from climate change and nuclear war were compounded by “cyber-­enabled information warfare” – the deliberate spread of disinformation that undermined society’s ability to respond.

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“The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist, but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode,” they said.

Ms Robinson, a former UN human rights commissioner, attended the event as head of the Climate Justice Foundation and chair of The Elders, an organisation of former world leaders and diplomats dedicated to working for joint solutions to global problems.

She asked current leaders to unite “to pull humanity back from the brink”.

“The Doomsday Clock now stands at 100 seconds to midnight, the most dangerous situation that humanity has ever faced,” she said. “Now is the time to come together.”

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists began as a publication by scientists after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to explain the implications of failing to control man-made threats to humanity.

Their iconic clock was first set in 1947 at seven minutes to midnight and has been adjusted annually since.

The hands were furthest from midnight in the early 1990s when the Cold War officially ended and the United States and Russia stopped stockpiling nuclear weapons.

In this year’s assessment, the experts said the nuclear threat was grave, chiefly because of the hostility between the US, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

“National leaders have ended or undermined several major arms control treaties and negotiations during the last year, creating an environment conducive to a renewed nuclear arms race, to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and to lowered barriers to nuclear war,” they said.

On the threat of climate change, they said governmental action fell far short of what was needed.

“At UN climate meetings last year, national delegates made fine speeches but put forward few concrete plans to further limit the carbon dioxide emissions that are disrupting Earth’s climate,” they said.

“This limited political response came during a year when the effects of man-made climate change were manifested by one of the warmest years on record, extensive wildfires, and quicker-than-expected melting of glacial ice.”

Cyber-based disinformation heightened the threats by sowing distrust among nations, they added.

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