2016 Is The Hottest Year On Record, Says UN

According to the United Nations’ (UN) World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the year 2016 will turn out to be the hottest on record, as average temperatures for the year were set to reach about 1.2 C over pre-Industrial Revolution levels – meaning that 16 of the 17 hottest years on record were in this century. The report was published during the second week of UN climate talks in Marrakesh.

The WMO secretary general Petteri Taalas said:

This means that the world has already crossed the halfway mark to the upper limit of 2 C of warming overall, which the UN nations have agreed on to stay away from to avoid the worst-case scenario of climate change.

Parts of Arctic Russia saw temperatures going 6 C to 7 C higher than the long-term average, whereas other Arctic and sub-Arctic regions in Russia, Alaska and northwest Canada were at least 3 C above average.

Additionally, the annual Global Carbon Budget report reported that carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels have been nearly flat for three years in a row, which is not enough to stave off the dangerous effects of climate change.

While global carbon emission saw “almost no growth” last year, India's emission was found to grow by 5.2 per cent in 2015. India contributed 6.3 per cent of all global CO2 emissions last year.

Both analyses forewarn that concentrations of planet-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million in 2015 and are likely to exceed that record in 2016.

With inputs from IANS