“Every decade since 1980 has been successively warmer than the previous decade, with the last one (2010-1019) being around 0.2 ° C warmer than the previous one (2000-2009),” the report said. “As a primary driver for our changing climate, the abundance of many long-lived glass particles continues to rise.”
- The six warmest years on record have all happened in the past six years, since 2014.
- 2019 was one of the three hottest years since records began in the mid-1800s. Only 2016, and for some datasets 2015, were warmer than 2019.
- Average sea surface temperature in 2019 was the second to highest on record, surpassed only by 2016.
- Sea level rose for the eighth consecutive year to a new record high.
- Surface temperatures for the Arctic were the second highest in 120 years, just behind 2016. In the Antarctic, 2019 was the second warmest year for the continent since 1979.
- Glaciers continue to melt at a steady rate for the 32nd straight year.
The warming effect of the significant concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitric oxide – was 45% higher than in 1990, the researchers found. Burning fossil fuels in our cars, planes and factories releases pollutants of heat into the air, causing our planet to heat up.
Global carbon dioxide concentrations, which represent the bulk of the gases’ heating power, increased in 2010 to a record 409.8 parts per million, the study found. That was the “highest in the modern 61-year-old measurement record, as well as the highest ever measured in ice core records dating back to 800,000 years,” the report said.
“A number of extreme events, such as burns, heat waves and drought, have linked at least part of their root to rising global temperatures. And, of course, the rise in global temperatures is linked to another climate indicator: the continuing rise in global warming. greenhouse gas emissions, in particular carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane, “said Dunn.
Heat absorbing, rising seas
July 2019 was the hottest month on Earth on record, the report found.
More than a dozen countries in Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and the Caribbean reported high temperatures last year. It was so hot that Belgium and the Netherlands for the time being saw 40 ° C (104 ° F) temperatures.
Dunn said the beginning of this millennium has been warmer than any other period since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
“Global average temperature is perhaps the simplest climate indicator by which the changes taking place in our climate can be considered. 2019 was one of the top three warmest years in the historical record dating back to 1850. It also marks the end of a decade in which the average global temperature increased by 0.2 ° C compared to the previous decade, “he said.
Rising ocean temperatures have continued to reduce ice at alarming levels. The extent and size of ice loss across the Greenland ice sheet – the second largest in the world – rivaled last year in 2012, the previous year of record ice loss.
Melting of glaciers and ice sheets, along with warming oceans, account for the trend in rising global sea levels, the report said.
In 2019, sea levels rose for the eighth consecutive year and broke a record high for the 27 years since satellite imagery, after rising about 3.4 inches, or 87.6 millimeters, in that time above the 1993 average. were.
The report comes as the world struggles to contain the coronavirus pandemic, which overwhelms many healthcare systems, and shatters economies around the world.
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