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Under leaden skies, throngs of demonstrators stretching as far as the eye could see moved through Midtown Manhattan late Sunday morning, chanting their demands for action on climate change.

With drums and tubas, banners and floats, the People’s Climate March represented a broad coalition of ages, races, geographic locales and interests, with union members, religious leaders, scientists, politicians and students joining the procession.

"I’m here because I really feel that every major social movement in this country has come when people get together,” said Carol Sutton of Norwalk, Conn., the president of a teachers’ union. “It begins in the streets.”

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Climates marches were held across the globe on Sunday, from Paris to Papua New Guinea, and with world leaders gathering at the United Nations on Tuesday for a climate summit meeting, marchers said the timing was right for the populist message in support of limits on carbon emissions. The signs that marchers held were as varied as the movement: “There is No Planet B,” “Forests Not for Sale” and “Jobs, Justice, Clean Energy.”

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MANHATTAN
Assembly area
BROADWAY
CENTRAL
PARK
W. 65TH ST.
Parade route
“The climate is changing,” said Otis Daniels, 58, of the Bronx. “Everyone knows it; everyone feels it. But no one is doing anything about it.”

At 12:58 p.m., organizers quieted the crowd for a moment of silence, followed by a blast of noise intended to sound an alarm on climate change. On Avenue of the Americas at 57th Street, there was an eerie silence as marchers raised their arms and looked down. At exactly 1 p.m., a whistle pierced the silence and set off a minute of solid sound: There were drumbeats and the blaring of horns, but mostly it was generated by people’s whoops and screams.

The march began just before 11:30 a.m. and covered a two-mile route starting in Columbus Circle. It threaded east on 59th Street, down Avenue of the Americas, then west on 42nd Street to 11th Avenue and south to 34th Street. Toward the back of the march, at 83rd Street, protesters were still waiting to start moving at 1:30 p.m., two hours after the demonstration began.

The U.N. summit meeting this week is expected to create a framework for a potential global agreement on emissions late next year in Paris.

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The timing of the march was also significant in another regard. Last week, meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that this summer — the months of June, July and August — was the hottest on record for the globe, and