Artificial global warming and a strong El Nino, World weather is bursting the annual heat record in this year, the World Meteorological Organization announced on Wednesday.
Advertisement
This year has already logged the warmest March, May, June, July, August, September and October on record, according to monthly reports by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The soaring temperatures come as El Nino, a natural phenomenon that sparks global weather extremes, is at its strongest in more than 15 years and gaining strength.
Geneva: The year 2015 is shaping up to be the hottest on record, with the highest ocean surface temperatures ever measured, the UN’s weather agency said today, ahead of a crucial climate change summit in Paris.
“The state of the global climate in 2015 will make history for a number of reasons”, WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in an accompanying statement.
Levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached new highs and in the Northern hemisphere spring 2015 the three-month global average concentration of carbon dioxide crossed the 400 parts per million barrier for the first time. “This is all bad news for the planet”, he added.
“There were significant, record heatwaves in many parts of the world [in 2015]”, Jarraud said.
“Eastern areas of north America were colder than average during the year, but none were record cold”. That led the WMO to describe 2014 as “nominally” the warmest year on record, with the caveat that it couldn’t be absolutely certain which of the very hot recent years was the hottest.
Since oceans have been absorbing more than 90 percent of the energy accumulated in the climate system from human emissions of greenhouse gases, temperatures at greater depths are also rising, as are sea levels, the agency said. January and February were the second hottest, and April was the fourth-warmest in a series beginning in 1880.
Meanwhile, the years from 2011 to the present are also set to be the hottest five-year period on record, the WMO said.
The WMO said temperatures had now risen 1 degree Celsius since the industrial revolution, with 2C considered the limit to avoid risky climate change.
Advertisement
The human-induced warming is being accentuated this year as a periodic El Nino ocean warming event is underway in the Pacific Ocean. It included heavy rains and flooding in the southern United States, Mexico, Bolivia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and droughts in the western United States, central Europe, Russian Federation and Southeast Asia.
