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(CNN) – Forest fire registry. A deadly hurricane season. Arctic sea ice is at its lowest level. Drought. Floods Heat waves.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) annual climate report, released on Wednesday, reads like a long list of extreme weather events and natural disasters. But it may well be a preview of things to come.
The report, which includes data from January to October and is based on input from dozens of experts and international organizations, says that 2020 is on track to be one of the three warmest years on record after 2016 and 2019. The average global temperature is set to be around 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
It is worrying that 2020 has been unusually hot despite the cooling effect of La Niña. The recurring weather phenomenon, which developed in August and strengthened in October, is typically associated with below-normal sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean caused by changes in winds, air pressure and rainfall. While La Niña is limited to the Pacific, its effects act to cool temperatures around the planet, like Earth’s natural air conditioning. But its impact has been more than offset by the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, the WMO said.
The group’s general secretary, Petteri Taalas, said that in the past, unusually warm years, such as 2016, coincided with a strong El Niño event, which is the opposite of La Niña and causes above-average sea surface temperatures. and therefore warmer global temperatures. No longer.
“Despite the current La Niña conditions, this year has already shown near-record heat comparable to the previous record of 2016,” Taalas said in a press release accompanying the main report.
WMO also said that the period from 2011 to 2020 will be the warmest decade on record, with the six warmest years all since 2015. The trend is likely to continue. While emissions fell during the close of spring, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere soared to a new record this year.
Taalas said there is now at least a one in five chance that the average global temperature will temporarily exceed pre-industrial levels by 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2024, a critical threshold to which the Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming.
The effects of this rapid warming have been felt around the world throughout the year, from extreme heat and wildfires to flooding and a record Atlantic hurricane season. Taalas summed up 2020 as “another remarkable year for our climate.”
Millions of people have been forced to leave their homes, some of them permanently, due to extreme weather and other events caused or exasperated by climate change. Hundreds have died.
At the end of last year and early this year, Australia suffered what was the worst wildfire season on record. Research has shown that the climate crisis made those fires at least 30% more likely. At least 33 people and an estimated 1 billion animals died in the fires, according to Australia’s parliament. Hundreds more died as a result of exposure to the smoke.
Devastating wildfires in the western United States killed at least 43 this fall. In October, California recorded the first “gigafire,” a term for a fire burning at least one million acres of land, in modern history.
The Pantanal of South America, the largest tropical wetlands in the world, was ablaze for months.
This year also brought a lot of evidence of a trend that climate scientists have been warning about for some time: hurricanes, typhoons and tropical cyclones around the world are getting stronger and potentially more deadly as the world warms due to to the climate crisis.
The number of tropical cyclones globally was above average in 2020. The North Atlantic hurricane season had the highest number of named storms on record. Many caused death and devastation. At least 100 people died last month when tropical depression Eta hit Central America. Hurricane Iota, which struck Nicaragua about three weeks later, was the strongest hurricane of 2020 in the Atlantic and the strongest to ever hit the country. In the United States, Hurricane Laura killed at least 27 people in August.
In the Philippines, dozens of people were killed when two consecutive typhoons struck 10 days apart in November.
Crucially, the global oceans also continued to warm. The oceans serve as a good indicator of the real impact of climate change. Covering almost three-quarters of the Earth’s surface, they absorb the vast majority of the world’s heat. According to the WMO report, more than 80% of the world’s ocean experienced a marine heat wave at some point in 2020.
The report highlighted the Arctic as an area experiencing “drastic changes” as global temperatures rise. In September, the amount of Arctic sea ice dropped to the second lowest level since records began in 1978.
According to the report, the Greenland ice sheet has continued to lose mass, albeit at a slower rate than that observed in 2019.
The ice sheet plays a key role in regulating the global climate. Its shiny surface reflects heat back into the atmosphere. When it melts or doesn’t refreeze, the darker ocean surface absorbs more heat.
The WMO said that 2020 also brought some unusually strong heat waves, especially in North Asia, particularly in the Siberian Arctic. In parts of northern Siberia, the year to date has been 5 degrees Celsius or warmer than average, the WMO said.
South America and much of Europe also experienced prolonged heat waves and droughts.
Several temperature records fell this year. When the mercury reached 54.4 degrees Celsius in California’s Death Valley in August, it was the highest known temperature in the world in at least the last 80 years.
And while some parts of the world experienced heat waves and drought, other areas suffered deadly floods. According to the report, more than 2,000 deaths were recorded during the flood season in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Myanmar.
This story was first published on CNN.com, “2020 will be one of the three hottest years on record despite the cooling effect of La Niña, says the report.”
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