The last ten years have been the hottest and “most exceptional” ever, with extreme events that have severely affected people and ecosystems. 2019 could become the second or third hottest year on record.
2019 has been an exceptional, unusual year. Rarely have so many people, animals and ecosystems been hit, as in the past twelve months, by the increasingly severe and frequent effects of climate change. And just as the year draws to a close, confirmation arrives that 2019 will close a decade of exceptional warmth and extreme events: the last ten years have indeed been the hottest on record.
According to data published by the World Meteorological Organization (Wmo), the average temperature recorded between January and October 2019 was 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (i.e. between 1850 and 1900). It is no coincidence that October was the warmest ever recorded. With these figures in hand, scientists predict that 2019 will also be the second or third hottest year on record — 2016 remains the first. In any case, since the 1980s every decade has been warmer than the previous one, with an increase of 0.1–0.2 degrees per decade.
We are not even remotely on the right track to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General
With the publication of the data at Cop 25 in Madrid — the United Nations climate change conference at which stocktaking is under way on what has been done, what has not been done, and what still needs to be done — Wmo Secretary-General Petteri Taalas commented that "if we do not urgently take climate action now, we are heading towards a temperature increase of more than 3 degrees by the end of the century, with even more severe effects on human well-being." Taalas explains that at this moment we are still not on track to meet the targets for keeping the temperature increase well below 2 degrees by the end of the century.
But it is not only about temperatures. November brought the news that 2018 set a new CO2 record in the atmosphere, reaching 407.8 parts per million — a value so high that the last time it was recorded was between 3 and 5 million years ago. And 2019, once again, has seen emissions continuing to rise, with a new record: 36.8 billion tonnes of CO2.
The Wmo report shows that in October 2019 sea levels reached their highest point since precision altimetric measurements began in 1993, ocean temperatures are rising continuously, reaching near-record levels, as is ocean acidification: seawater is 26 per cent more acidic compared to the industrial era. Ice has not been spared either: in 2019 Antarctica recorded its lowest ice extent in certain months, and in the Arctic the second lowest ice level was recorded.
Once again, in 2019, climate-related risks have taken a heavy toll.Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General
The document, entitled Provisional statement on the state of the global climate in 2019 and to be published in its full and final form in March 2020, also includes an in-depth look at the effects of the climate on human health (for example, the heatwaves of this summer alone killed thousands of people in Europe), on food security (12.3 million people in the Horn of Africa region alone), and on migration (the natural causes behind displacement in 2019 were floods, followed by droughts and storms).
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"Every day the effects of climate change manifest themselves in extreme and 'unusual' weather. Countries from the Bahamas to Japan and Mozambique have suffered the effects of devastating tropical cyclones," concluded Petteri Taalas. "Wildfires have devastated the Arctic and Australia. Heatwaves and floods that used to occur once every hundred years are becoming more regular." And it is this word, "regular", that best resonates in the context of the climate crisis we find ourselves in today, and which will replace the word "unusual" should we continue down the path of inaction.