Climate change: the year 2019, the second warmest on record after 2016

The year 2019 was the second warmest year on record after 2016, according to analysis of major international data collected by the World Meteorological Organization.

Averaged, the annual global temperature in 2019 was 1.1 degrees Celsius higher than the 1850-1900 average, used to represent pre-industrial conditions.

Thus, 2016 remains the warmest year on record due to a very strong El Niño event, which caused an unusual rise in temperatures, and long-term climate change.

But average temperatures in both the last five years and the last decade have been the warmest in history since records have been kept and, since 1980, each decade has been warmer than the last, confirming that climate change is underway, as scientists have observed.

Global warming doesn’t stop

The most worrying news is that the trend will continue due to the record levels of greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere endangering life on the planet.

“On the current path of carbon dioxide emissions, we are heading towards a temperature increase of 3 to 5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century,” said the secretary general of the Meteorological Organization, Petteri Taalas.

Temperatures are only part of the story, the Organization notes. The past year and decade were characterized by ice retreat in the polar ice caps and glaciers, record sea level rise, rising heat and ocean acidification, and extreme weather.

All these events have combined to significantly impact the health and well-being of humans and the environment, as highlighted by the Meteorological Organization’s Interim Declaration on the State of the Global Climate in 2019, which was presented at the UN Climate Change Conference, COP25, in Madrid. The full statement will be issued in March 2020.

“The year 2020 began where 2019 ended, with high-impact weather events. Australia had its hottest and driest year, setting the stage for the massive bushfires that are being so devastating to people and property, wildlife, ecosystems and the environment,” Taalas said.

He said that “unfortunately” we should expect to see many more extreme weather events throughout 2020 and in the coming decades, driven by those record levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The heat of the oceans

More than 90% of excess heat is stored in the oceans, so ocean heat content is a good way to quantify the rate of global warming. A new study published Jan. 13 in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, with data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. National Center for Environmental Information, and the German Institute for Atmospheric Physics, showed that the ocean heat level was set a record in 2019.

Modern temperature records began in 1850. The World Meteorological Organization uses datasets based on monthly climatological records from Global Observing Systems, including the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the Metley Hadley Center in the United Kingdom, and the East Anglia Climate Research Unit University in the United Kingdom.

It also uses datasets from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and its Copernicus Climate Change Service, as well as from the Japan Meteorological Agency.

This method combines millions of meteorological and marine observations, including from satellites, with models to produce a complete analysis of the atmosphere. Combining observations with models makes it possible to estimate temperatures at any time and anywhere in the world, even in areas with a scarcity of data, such as the polar regions.

The dispersion between the five datasets used to establish the global average temperature in 2019 was 0.15°C, with the lowest at 1.05 degrees Celsius and the highest at 1.20 degrees than the pre-industrial baseline.

Source: UN News