We may be living in the hottest decade ever, says UN

Petteri Taalas, secretary-general to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), an agency of the UN, says the current decade is on track to be the hottest in world’s history. 

Taalas said this on Tuesday at the UN climate summit in Madrid, Spain.

The event saw the gathering of delegates from nearly 200 countries to iron out rules to reach the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels.

He said if urgent climate action is not taken, the world’s temperature would shoot up by over three degrees at the end of the century.

“We are nowhere near on track to meet the Paris Agreement target,” Taalas said.

“If we do not take urgent climate action now, then we are heading for a temperature increase of more than 3 degrees by the end of the century.’’

According to the WMO, the global average temperature until October was 1.1 degrees above the levels seen before the start of the industrial age in the late 18th century.

He said the recent records put 2019 on course to be the second or third warmest year on record, adding that recent finding shows that concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide hit a record level in the atmosphere in 2018 and continued to rise in 2019.

Taalas said the oceans are paying a heavy price for global warming, as they absorb heat and carbon dioxide.

“Ocean’s heat has reached record levels as seawater is 26 per cent more acidic than at the start of the industrial era warning that marine ecosystems are being degraded,” he said.