The last decade (2010-2019) is proof that the climate crisis is accelerating. It was the hottest period ever recorded. Going back further: every decade since the 1980s has been successively warmer than the one before.
The rise in average global temperature is accelerating too – with the last decade as much as 0.39°C warmer than the long-term average, compared with an average increase of 0.07°C per decade stretching back to 1880. And 2010-2019, was 0.2°C warmer than 2000-2009.
The peer-reviewed State Of The Climate report, compiled by 520 scientists from over 60 countries, said 2019 was one of three warmest years, and all the years after 2013 have been warmer than any year dating back to the mid-1800s. The other two hottest years were 2015 and 2016. The report also said temperatures for permafrost were increasing, and lake temperatures were above long-term averages.
Robert Dunn, a UK Met Office climate scientist, said:
And this millennium has been warmer than any comparable period since the Industrial Revolution. A number of extreme events, such as wildfires, heatwaves, and droughts, have at least part of their root linked to the rise in global temperature. The rise in global temperatures is linked to the ongoing increase in emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
The view for 2019 is that climate indicators and observations show that the global climate is continuing to change rapidly. The global average temperature is perhaps the simplest climate indicator through which to view the changes taking place in our climate. 2019 was one of the top three warmest years in the historical record dating back to 1850. It also marks the end of a decade in which the average global temperature had risen by 0.2C when compared with the previous decade.
The past six years have included freakishly hot temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctica, massive heatwaves in Europe, the US, and India, flooding across east Africa, and raging wildfires across the globe from Alaska, to Australia to Ukraine.
Overall, since the pre-industrial era, the planet has heated up by about 1°C on average. Michael Mann, a Penn State University climate scientist, said:
As this latest assessment comprehensively confirms, we have just witnessed the warmest decade on record. As other recent reports confirm, we must act dramatically over this next decade, bringing emissions down by a factor of two, if we are to limit warming below catastrophic levels of 1.5°C that will commit us to ever-more dangerous climate change impacts.
Rising temperatures aren’t just making Earth hotter; they’re altering the planet and human life as we know it. The consequences of climate change are profound. For example, Sea-surface temperatures are so high that glaciers are melting faster than ever before. Because of that, global sea levels have hit a high point of 3.4 inches above what they were, on average, three decades ago.
The levels of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) in the atmosphere are mostly to blame. Records show they’ve hit their highest level in 2019 – higher than any other period measured by modern instruments or ice cores dating back 800,000 years. This is clearly human-induced due to our dependence on burning fossil fuels.
