The year 2020 was one of the three warmest years on record and rivalled 2016 for the top spot, indicating the pace of the "human-induced" climate change which is now as powerful as the force of nature, the UN weather agency has said.
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2020 was one of three warmest years on record: World Meteorological Organisation
The year 2020 was one of the three warmest years on record and rivalled 2016 for the top spot, indicating the pace of the human-induced climate change which is now as powerful as the force of nature, the UN weather agency has said. All five datasets surveyed by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) concur that 2011-2020 was the warmest decade on record, in a persistent long-term climate change trend.
The warmest six years have all been since 2015, with 2016, 2019 and 2020 being the top three. The differences in average global temperatures among the three warmest years are indistinguishably small. The average global temperature in 2020 was about 14.9°C, 1.2 (± 0.1) °C above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level.
Another year, another climate record broken. Globally, 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year ever recorded. This was all the more remarkable given that cool conditions in the Pacific Ocean – known as La Niña – began to emerge in the second half of the year. The Earth’s mean surface temperature in 2020 was 1.25°C above the global average between 1850 and 1900 – one data point maybe, but part of an unrelenting, upward trend that’s largely driven by greenhouse gases from human activities.
Limiting the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C could help avoid some of the most harmful impacts of climate change. This target will feature prominently at the COP26 discussions, scheduled for Glasgow in November 2021. But whether the world warms by 1.5°C or 4°C, it won’t translate into the same amount of warming for everyone. Previous research with climate models has shown that the Arctic, central Brazil, the Mediterranean basin, and the mainland US could warm by much mo
Earth’s average temperature has risen more than 1.2°C (2°F) since the late 19th century.
Earth’s global average surface temperature in 2020 tied with 2016 for the warmest year on record, according to an analysis by NASA.
Continuing the planet’s long-term warming trend, the globally averaged temperature in 2020 was 1.02 degrees Celsius (1.84 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the baseline 1951–1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The year was slightly warmer than 2016 but within the margin of error of the analysis, making the years effectively tied.
“The last seven years have been the warmest seven years on record, typifying the ongoing and dramatic warming trend,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. “Whether one year is a record or not is not really that important; the important things are long-term trends. With these trends, and as the human impact on the climate increases, we have to expect that records will contin