The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has revealed last year was the Earth’s second-hottest since records began, and the world should brace itself for more extreme weather events such as the bushfires ravaging much of Australia.
The Geneva-based WMO combined several datasets, including two from the United States space administration NASA and the United Kingdom’s Met Office.
Reuters Newsagency reports these showed that the average global temperature in 2019 was 1.1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, creeping towards a globally agreed limit after which major changes to life on Earth are expected.
“The year 2020 has started out where 2019 left off, with high-impact weather and climate-related events,” WMO chief Professor Petteri Taalas said in a statement, pointing in particular to the devastating bush fires in Australia.
“Unfortunately, we expect to see much extreme weather throughout 2020 and the coming decades, fuelled by record levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Professor Taalas added.
Australia had its hottest, driest year ever, a precursor to the current bushfires still raging in parts of the country.
Scientists say climate change is likely to have contributed to severe weather in 2019 such as a heatwave in Europe and the hurricane that killed at least 50 people when it barrelled through the Bahamas in September.
Governments agreed at the United Nations sponsored 2015 Paris Agreement to cap fossil fuel emissions enough to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Beyond that global warming is expected to be so severe that it will all but wipe out the world’s coral reefs and most Arctic sea ice.
However, the WMO has previously said that much greater temperature rises, of 3.0°C to 5.0°C, can be expected if nothing is done to stop the rise in harmful emissions, which hit a new record in 2018.
The US, the world’s top historic greenhouse gas emitter and leading oil and gas producer, began the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement last year.
US President Donald Trump has cast doubt on mainstream climate science.
On a conference call with reporters, however, US scientists said it was clear from the data that greenhouse gas emissions were warming the planet.
“We end up with an attribution of these trends to human activity pretty much at the 100 percent level.
“All of the trends are effectively anthropogenic (man-made) at this point,” said Dr Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Reuters reports the hottest year on record was 2016, when a recurring weather pattern called El Nino pushed the average surface temperature to 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels, the WMO said.
“In the future we easily can expect warmer El Ninos than the previous ones,” said WMO scientist Omar Baddour.
“We can raise a red flag now,” he added.
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An alert of the UN has appeared in news media on 16 January 2020 wanting world to be well-prepared for more extreme weather in present year 2020 and beyond. This alert of the UN is based on some reports , in particular the one by The World Meteorological Organization , which has taken into account leading international disasters , increases in global temperatures. The world is reeling under fires and floods both. In this context , it may be apt to refer readers to this Vedic astrology writer’s predictive alerts to a number of countries through yearly predictions for them covering , in particular , the years 2019 and 2020. When the past has turned meaningful and accurate , it is believed that the future could also behave , more or less , the same way. So without taking readers to the past , present is being addressed here. The planetary impacts in the year 2020 , briefly put , underline two periods of worry covering more than one aspect of life in several countries of the world. That means something other than extreme weather cannot be ruled out. The period after mid-March to June 2020 ( June included) and mid-November to December 2020 ( December included) look to be calling our attention. This total period of nearly five months can introduce vulnerable global countries to likely extreme weather. This writer stumbled upon an analysis describing the nations leading to emit gas and repugnant smelling dangerous stuff . Such nations could probably be more vulnerable than others.