2010-2019 Hottest Decade in the History Says United Nations

This week United Nations has declared that the present decade is set to be the hottest decade in the history, after an annual assessment, which also outlined the ways in which climate change is outpacing the ability of human beings to adapt to it.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, the global temperatures so far this year were 1.1 degrees Celsius or two degrees Fahrenheit, which is above the pre-industrial average between 1850-1900. This calculation puts 2019 among the three warmest years ever recorded in history and possibly the hottest non-El Nino year yet.

Emissions created by human beings such as from burning fossil fuels, growing crops, building infrastructure and transporting goods make 2019 to break the record for the atmospheric carbon concentrations, locking in further warming, the WMO said.

Generally, oceans absorb 90 percent of the excess heat produced by greenhouse gases, but now they are at their highest recorded temperatures. The seas of the world are now a quarter more acidic than it was 150 years ago, threatening the vital marine ecosystems on which billions of people depend on for their jobs and food.

In October this year, the global mean sea level reached highest on record, due to the 329 billion tonnes of ice, which are lost from the Greenland ice sheet in the past 12 months.

The report by United Nations also said that more than 10 million people were internally displaced from one place to another in the first half of 2019, out of which seven million people directly due to extreme weather events such as storms, drought and flooding. By the end of the year, the WMO has also predicted that new displacements due to weather conditions could reach 22 million.

Petteri Taalas, Secretary General, WMO said, “Once again in 2019 weather and climate-related risks hit hard. Heat waves and floods which used to be once in a century events are becoming more regular occurrences”.

The year 2019 has already witnessed deadly heat waves in Europe, Australia and Japan, while superstorms created devastation in southeast Africa and wildfires, went out of control in Australia and California.

Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has also outlined how important it is for mankind to aim for a safer cap of 1.5C. Last week, the United Nations has also declared in its annual emissions gap assessment that the world is required to cut carbon emissions by 7.6 percent every year, until 2030 to hit 1.5C, but emissions levels are still rising.

In a world where, respective governments of the countries are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidizing fossil fuels, without any consensus among the countries in place, how to deal with climate-related catastrophe, which is going to take enormous shape in the days to come.