For the first time ever, average global temperatures will rise approximately 1.02°C above pre-industrial levels in a single year, the U.K.’s Met Office climate and meteorological agency reported.
Advertisement
The Met Office’s Hadley Center for Climate Science, in conjunction with the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, based its estimate on temperatures from January through September, which show the global mean surface temperature at 1.02°C above pre-industrial levels.
It says that poor people remain at greater risk of being impacted by different climate-related shocks like drought, flooding, crop failure, water-borne diseases, an increase in food prices, extreme weather patterns, which according to scientists, will be increasing because of climate change.
They said data suggests that 2016 will be similarly warm, and that warming will continue in a long period of time.
That means we’re already halfway to the accepted 2˚ C (3.6˚ F) warming threshold, past which the effects of climate change could prove risky.
Dr Peter Stott, head of the climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office said the latest figures revealing global average temperature rises reaching 1C were another piece of evidence that showed once again the “unequivocal warming” of the Earth. Melting ice and increasing sea levels could swallow up many islands and costal areas, leading to grave global consequences.
Chiefly, “the phenomenon (of climate change) has strengthened, and awareness along with it”, he told Europe1 radio. “We will be pleased if we can get to 2C”, she warned.
The previous Harper government announced in May that Canada’s national contribution for the Paris conference would be a 30 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by the year 2030.
The study found that rising global temperatures stand to push more than 100 million people into extreme poverty in the next 15 years, with sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia most at risk.
It will be impossible to put an end to poverty unless we take firm steps to reduce the threat of climate change and radically cut greenhouse gas emissions, warned the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim.
Advertisement
He said senior officials from 70 countries gathered in Paris agreed on the principle of a mechanism to reassess the countries’ emission pledges every five years in order to improve them.
