This year is poised to be one of the warmest on record, with the six warmest years all occurring since 2015, the World Meteorological Organization said Wednesday.
The last decade has been the warmest on record, according to the WMO’s provisional State of the Global Climate report. The report, which incorporates temperature data for this year through October, finds 2020 could be the second warmest year on record, behind 2016. The final report will be released in March.
“2020 has, unfortunately, been yet another extraordinary year for our climate,” said Petteri Taalas, the WMO’s secretary-general. He cited temperature records broken this year, wildfires in Australia and the western United States, and an unprecedented hurricane season in the Atlantic. Ocean heat also reached record levels in 2020, the WMO found.
It is possible, at least a one in five chance, that the average global temperature could temporarily surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2024, Taalas said. The more ambitious goal of the Paris climate agreement is to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Every tenth of a degree of warming matters, and today we are at 1.2 degrees of warming and already witnessing unprecedented climate extremes and volatility in every region and on every continent,” said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during a speech Wednesday at Columbia University.
Guterres called on governments to use coronavirus recovery funds to invest in cleaner energy and other technologies to reduce emissions. And while he praised recent efforts from the European Union, China, Japan, and other countries to strive toward net-zero emissions, he said much more needs to be done.
“I firmly believe that 2021 can be a new kind of leap year. The year of a quantum leap towards carbon neutrality,” Guterres added. “Every country, city, financial institution, and company should adopt plans for transitioning to net-zero emissions by 2050.”
