In addition to the pandemic, there is another topic that we often lose sight of: the climate change. Well, you can already guess: 2020 ties 2016 as the hottest year on record.
A warm winter and autumn have made the previous year the hottest ever recorded, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service has found. The Arctic continues to warm more quickly than the planet as a whole. The last decade was the hottest on record globally.
Average global temperatures in 2020 stood at 1.25 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) higher than pre-industrial levels, according to the service. The years from 2014 to 2020 were the hottest on record with both 2020 and 2016 hitting the record for the single hottest year.
Scientists urged governments and corporations to drastically slash their emissions in order to have any chance of achieving the 2015 Paris Agreement and to avoid a catastrophic climate change crisis.
"The extraordinary climate events of 2020 and the data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service show us that we have no time to lose," said Matthias Petschke, Director for Space in the European Commission, the EU's executive arm.
The biggest jump was seen in the Arctic Ocean and the north of Siberia, where temperatures soared to an unprecedented six degrees above the former average. The report also revealed that carbon dioxide emissions continued to rise, reaching a new high of 431 parts per million by the end of the year.
Yes, nature always strikes back. The figures are particularly alarming because, unlike in 2016, they were reached without the help of the El Nino weather event which added up to two tenths of a degree to the record four years ago, according to NASA and the UK's Met Office.
The increase in temperature has brought with it other extreme climate events such as droughts, heatwaves and floods. We have seen enough of the latter in the Philippines. The new year also brought us many storms and floods, especially in Mindanao.
In 2020, the world was also hit by a record number of hurricanes in the Atlantic, to the extent that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) ran out of letters to name them. The 2020 record came despite global lockdowns which led to a dramatic 7% drop in emissions.
"Since CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere like water in a bathtub, if we turn down the tap by 7%, the CO2 level just rises a bit more slowly," Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth system analysis at the German Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told AFP. "We need to shut off the tap to get a stable climate again."
Even if every country were to stick to their pledges from the Paris Agreement, global temperatures would still reach an increase of 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. A really sad outlook into the future for all of us and the following generations.
Average global temperatures in 2020 stood at 1.25 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) higher than pre-industrial levels, according to the service. The years from 2014 to 2020 were the hottest on record with both 2020 and 2016 hitting the record for the single hottest year.
Scientists urged governments and corporations to drastically slash their emissions in order to have any chance of achieving the 2015 Paris Agreement and to avoid a catastrophic climate change crisis.
"The extraordinary climate events of 2020 and the data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service show us that we have no time to lose," said Matthias Petschke, Director for Space in the European Commission, the EU's executive arm.
The biggest jump was seen in the Arctic Ocean and the north of Siberia, where temperatures soared to an unprecedented six degrees above the former average. The report also revealed that carbon dioxide emissions continued to rise, reaching a new high of 431 parts per million by the end of the year.
Yes, nature always strikes back. The figures are particularly alarming because, unlike in 2016, they were reached without the help of the El Nino weather event which added up to two tenths of a degree to the record four years ago, according to NASA and the UK's Met Office.
The increase in temperature has brought with it other extreme climate events such as droughts, heatwaves and floods. We have seen enough of the latter in the Philippines. The new year also brought us many storms and floods, especially in Mindanao.
In 2020, the world was also hit by a record number of hurricanes in the Atlantic, to the extent that the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) ran out of letters to name them. The 2020 record came despite global lockdowns which led to a dramatic 7% drop in emissions.
"Since CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere like water in a bathtub, if we turn down the tap by 7%, the CO2 level just rises a bit more slowly," Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth system analysis at the German Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told AFP. "We need to shut off the tap to get a stable climate again."
Even if every country were to stick to their pledges from the Paris Agreement, global temperatures would still reach an increase of 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. A really sad outlook into the future for all of us and the following generations.
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