This decade is set to be hottest in history, according to the annual assessment report of the United Nations released at the COP25 climate summit in Madrid Spain.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said global temperatures so far this year were 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average between 1850-1900. That puts 2019 on course to be in the top three warmest years ever recorded, and possibly the hottest non-EI Nino year yet..
More from the report
Oceans, which absorb 90% of the excess heat produced by greenhouse gases, are now at their highest recorded temperature.
The world’s seas are now a quarter more acidic than 150 years ago, threatening vital marine ecosystems upon which billions of people rely for food and jobs.
In October this year, the global mean sea level reached its highest on record, fueled by the 329 billion tonnes of ice lost from the Greenland ice sheet in 12 months.
More than 10 million people were internally displaced in the first half of 2019 – seven million directly due to extreme weather events such as storms, flooding and drought. By the end of the year, the WMO said, new displacements due to weather extremes could reach 22 million.
The report said each of the last four decades has been hotter than its previous one.
Global effort
Nations were in crucial talks in Madrid aimed at finalizing rules for the 2015 Paris climate accord, which enjoins countries to work to limit global temperature rises to “well below” 2 degree C.
The intergovernmental panel on climate change(IPCC) last year outlined how vital it was for humankind to aim for a safer cap of 1.5 C – ideally by slashing greenhouse gas emissions and retooling the global economy towards renewable energy. The UN said in its annual “emissions gap” assessment that the world needed to cut carbon emissions by 7.6% each year, every year, until 2030 to hit 1.5 C.
And while governments spend hundreds of billions of dollars subsiding fossil fuels, there appears to be no consensus over how countries already dealing with climate-related catastrophe can fund efforts to adapt to the new reality.
Even if Paris pledges were honored, Earth is still on course to be more than 3C warmer by the end of the century, say scientists.
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