Last month was the warmest January on record in the world. At the same time, Europe's temperature was three degrees Celsius higher than the January average from 1981 to 2010, the European Union's climate monitoring system said Tuesday.
In the entire strip of countries from Norway to Russia, temperatures were unprecedented – 6 ° C above the same 30-year benchmark, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
Scientists say new temperature highs – monthly, yearly, decadal – have become commonplace due to the impact of climate change, caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels.
The past five years have been the hottest on record, as has the ten-year period 2010–2019.
2019 – the second warmest year – was just 0.04 degrees below 2016 levels, when temperatures rose from the powerful El Niño, an intermittent natural weather event over the Pacific Ocean.
The world record last month was 0.03 degrees above the warmest January, also in 2016.
In Europe, last month was “about 0.2 ° C warmer than the previous warmest January 2007, and 3.1 ° C warmer than the January average between 1981-2010,” reports C3S.
Exceptional above average temperatures also extended to almost all of Russia, and above normal throughout most of the United States, eastern Canada, Japan, and parts of eastern China.
Temperatures were higher than usual in New South Wales, Australia, where massive wildfires devastated large areas.
Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 – the cause of global warming – are currently at their highest levels in at least 800,000 years.
Last year, the United Nations said anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 7.6 percent annually over the next decade to limit global warming to 1.5 ° C, an aspirational goal set in the historic Paris Agreement.
Sources: Agence France-Presse
