2020 one of three hottest years ever recorded: U.N.

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“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal. Nature always strikes back — and it is already doing so with growing force and fury,”

This year is on course to be one of the three warmest ever recorded, the United Nations warned that the world was on the brink of a “climate catastrophe”.
The past six years, 2015 to 2020, are set to make up all six of the hottest years since modern records began in 1850.
The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change calls for capping global warming at well below two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level, while countries will pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Changing frontiers

2020 has been yet another extraordinary year for our climate. The average global temperature in 2020 is set to be about 1.2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. There is at least a one in five chance of it temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2024.

Hottest decade

The WMO said 2020 seemed on course to be the second-hottest year ever.
The years from 2015 to 2020 are therefore individually “likely to be the six warmest on record”.
Temperature averages across the last five years, and across the last 10-year period, “are also the warmest on record”.
Oil, gas and coal production must fall six percent a year in order to limit catastrophic global warming, said the UN's annual Production Gap assessment, which measures the difference between the Paris goals and countries' fossil fuel production plans.
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — the main driver of climate change — hit record highs last year and continued climbing in 2020 despite measures to halt the Covid-19 pandemic.
The annual impact of the coronavirus crisis was expected to be a drop of between 4.2 and 7.5 percent in carbon dioxide emissions.
However, CO2 remains in the atmosphere for centuries, meaning the effect of the pandemic is negligible.

Wildfires, sweltering Siberia

New extreme temperatures on land, sea and especially in the Arctic consumed vast areas in Australia, Siberia, the US west coast and South America.
Flooding in parts of Africa and southeast Asia led to massive population displacement and undermined food security for millions.
This year's La Nina cool phase of the Pacific Ocean surface temperatures cycle raised the question of how hot 2020 might otherwise have been.
The WMO said that more than 80% of the ocean area had experienced at least one marine heatwave so far in 2020.
Recently, sea level has risen at a higher rate due partly to increased melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
The 2020 provisional State of the Global Climate report is based on temperature data from January to October. The final 2020 report will be published in March 2021.