2020 one of the three hottest years ever recorded: UN

GENEVA, Switzerland – This year is on track to be one of the three warmest ever recorded, the United Nations said on Wednesday, when the UN chief warned that the world was on the brink of a “climate catastrophe.”

The past six years, from 2015 to 2020, are projected to constitute the six hottest years since modern records began in 1850, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in its interim report on the state of the global climate of the United Nations. 2020.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the 2020 report details “how close we are to climate catastrophe.”

“Apocalyptic fires and floods, cyclones and hurricanes are increasingly the new normal,” he said in a speech at Columbia University in New York on the state of the planet.

“Humanity is waging a war against nature. This is suicidal. Nature always fights back, and is already doing so with increasing strength and fury. “

The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change calls for a cap on global warming well below two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level (1850-1900), while countries will continue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 C.

“Unfortunately, 2020 has been another extraordinary year for our climate,” said WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas.

“The mean global temperature in 2020 is projected to be about 1.2 C above the pre-industrial level.

“There is at least a one in five chance that it will temporarily exceed 1.5 ° C by 2024.”

– Warmer decade –

WMO said that 2020 looked set to be the second hottest year in history.

Thus, the years 2015 to 2020 individually “are likely to be the six warmest on record,” according to the report.

Temperature averages over the past five years, and over the past 10-year period, “are also the warmest on record,” he added.

Neville Nicholls from Monash University in Melbourne said this was “a testament to accelerating global warming.”

“It took us about a century for our greenhouse gases to warm the world by 1 C; we are on track to add another 1 C in the next 30 years, “he said.

Oil, gas and coal production must fall by 6 percent a year to limit catastrophic global warming, said the UN’s annual production gap assessment, which measures the difference between Paris targets and production plans. of fossil fuels from countries.

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the main driver of climate change, reached record levels last year and continued to rise in 2020 despite measures to stop the Covid-19 pandemic.

The annual impact of the coronavirus crisis was expected to be a 4.2 to 7.5 percent drop in carbon dioxide emissions.

However, CO2 remains in the atmosphere for centuries, which means that the effect of the pandemic is negligible.

Still, Taalas was encouraged by China’s bid for carbon neutrality by 2060 and US President-elect Joe Biden’s 2050 target, saying these and the promises of the European Union, Japan and Canada could make countries like India and Russia follow suit.

Early Wednesday, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared a “climate emergency” and told parliament that urgent action was needed for the sake of future generations.

– Forest fires, suffocating Siberia –

Taalas said that 2020 saw “new extreme temperatures on land, sea and especially in the Arctic.

“Wildfires consumed vast areas in Australia, Siberia, the west coast of the United States and South America.

“Floods in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia caused massive population displacement and undermined food security for millions.”

The heat in northern Siberia reached 38 C in Verkhoyansk on June 20, tentatively the highest known temperature anywhere north of the Arctic Circle.

This year’s cold La Niña phase of the Pacific Ocean surface temperature cycle raised the question of how hot 2020 might have been otherwise.

The WMO said that more than 80 percent of the ocean area had experienced at least one marine heat wave so far in 2020.

“Recently, the sea level has risen at a higher rate due in part to the greater melting of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica,” the report says.

“In the Arctic, the minimum annual sea ice extent was the second lowest on record.”

Meanwhile, a record 30 named storms, including 13 hurricanes, formed over the Atlantic Ocean, depleting the alphabet and forcing a switch to the Greek alphabet for the second time.

The 2020 interim report on the state of the global climate is based on temperature data from January to October.

The final report for 2020 will be published in March 2021.

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