Climatologists from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recorded another increase in temperature: October 2016 was 1.2 degrees warmer compared to the usual averages. Thanks to this, the outgoing year claims to be the hottest in the entire history of observations, which have been conducted since the 19th century.
According to UN Deputy Press Secretary Farhan Haq, 16 of the 17 hottest years are in the current century. Also, the United Nations is concerned about the rate of melting of the Greenland ice sheets, which continues to grow.
Now the count is not in fractions of degrees, but in units, while a change in temperature even by half a degree can radically change the situation in the world.
“In many Arctic regions of Russia, temperatures exceeded the average long-term indicators by 6-7 degrees. Temperatures in many other arctic and subarctic regions - Russia, Alaska and northwest Canada - were at least 3 degrees above normal. We are used to measuring climate change in fractions of a degree, but this is a completely different picture,”said WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas.
After such statements, environmentalists again started talking about global warming. However, no one forgot about it: recent studies indicate that by 2060 more than a billion people will live in a zone of constant floods and floods, and Spain and Portugal by the end of the century will completely turn into a desert.
It is important that the recorded indicators are close to the critical mark, which was designated by the countries participating in the climate summit in Paris. Recall that then the leaders of states agreed to keep global warming within 1.5-2 degrees from the average temperature of the pre-industrial era.
However, the climate is changing faster than expected. The El Niño phenomenon has made a significant contribution to warming, but nevertheless, experts still consider the main reason for greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. And since their volume does not decrease, the thermometer will also continue to creep up. According to forecasts, 2017 promises to be no less hot than this year, although climatologists are not yet expecting new "heat records".
Much will become clear with the arrival of winter: according to some forecasts, it should become the most severe in the last hundred years, and in all countries of the planet. There is also reason to believe that spring will be late with its arrival in Europe: the temperature will rise to the spring norm only in early April.
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Experts associate such weather phenomena with the disruption of the movement of air masses: we owe the cyclones from the south to snowfalls and storms that are already raging in some regions of Russia. Behind them, the arrival of cold masses of Arctic air is expected.
We add that this year the climatic results were summed up earlier than usual due to the UN World Conference on Climate Change (COP-22), which started not so long ago in Morocco. In addition, on November 4, the Paris Agreement entered into force, designed to replace the Kyoto Protocol. And now it is becoming clear: to prevent an ecological catastrophe, we need to act faster.
Let us also recall that the consequences of global warming continue to spread to the animal world: warming in the Arctic harms African birds, and in Australia, due to climate change, a whole species of mammals became extinct for the first time.