2020 has tied with 2016 as the world’s warmest year on record, capping the hottest decade ever recorded, Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said in new data Friday.
All of the world’s warmest years have occurred in the last six years, according to the climate change service, an arm of the European Commission. However, the researchers note that while 2016’s record temperatures included a strong warming El Niño event that contributed to driving temperatures up, 2020 experienced a cooling La Niña.
That means warming caused by rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere is increasingly overtaking any slight cooling effect a La Niña event would have.
The Copernicus data also finds global carbon concentrations are continuing to spike, though the growth rate was slightly lower in 2020 than the prior year.
“2020 stands out for its exceptional warmth in the Arctic and a record number of tropical storms in the North Atlantic,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, in a statement. “It is no surprise that the last decade was the warmest on record, and is yet another reminder of the urgency of ambitious emissions reductions to prevent adverse climate impacts in the future.”
U.S. scientific agencies, including NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are slated to release their temperature data for 2020 next week. Those agencies are expected to conclude 2020 was either the warmest or second-warmest year on record, according to the Washington Post.
2020, a year that brought intense wildfires in Australia and the Western United States and an unprecedented Atlantic hurricane season, also saw massive monetary losses from natural disasters, totaling $210 billion globally, according to data released Thursday by insurer Munich Re.
The U.S. accounted for $95 billion, a significant share of those losses and more than $40 billion greater than the losses it experienced in 2019. According to Munich Re, $28 billion of those U.S. losses were uninsured.
Six of the 10 costliest natural disasters in 2020 occurred in the U.S., with the deadly Category 4 hurricane Laura costing the most at $13 billion in losses. Munich Re also pointed to costly thunderstorms in the Midwest, including the derecho that slammed Iowa in August and the massive, devastating wildfires in California and the West over the summer and fall that contributed to the high U.S. losses.
“Even if the weather disasters for one year cannot be directly linked to climate change, and a longer period needs to be studied to assess their significance, these extreme values fit with the expected consequences of a decades-long warming trend for the atmosphere and oceans that is influencing risks,” said Ernst Rauch, Munich Re’s chief climate and geoscientist.
