The UN warns that 2017 will be one of the three hottest years in history.
This year will be one of the three hottest on record, a new sign of human-induced climate change, which is exacerbating “extraordinary weather events” such as hurricanes, droughts and floods, the United Nations (UN) warned in a report released on Monday (06); prepared as a guideline for the nearly 200 nations meeting in Bonn, Germany, between November 6 and 17, the report is an attempt to strengthen the 2015 Paris climate agreement despite the United States' promise to withdraw from the pact.
Reuters - This year will be one of the three hottest on record, a further sign of human-induced climate change that is exacerbating “extraordinary weather events” such as hurricanes, droughts and floods, the United Nations warned on Monday.
The UN report was prepared as a guideline for the nearly 200 nations meeting in Bonn, Germany, between November 6 and 17 in an attempt to strengthen the 2015 Paris climate agreement despite the United States' promise to withdraw from the pact.
“2017 is on track to be among the three warmest years on record,” said the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), projecting that average surface temperatures will be slightly less scorching after a record high in 2016 and roughly equal to those of 2015, the previous warmest year.
And 2017 would have been the hottest year on record without El Niño, a natural event that releases heat from the Pacific Ocean approximately every five years, it was reported. El Niño raised global temperatures in 2015 and 2016.
“We have witnessed extraordinary weather events,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a statement regarding 2017, highlighting intense hurricanes in the Atlantic and the Caribbean, temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius in Pakistan, Iran and Oman, monsoon floods in Asia and droughts in East Africa.
"Many of these events—and detailed scientific studies will determine exactly how many—bear the telltale sign of climate change caused by higher concentrations of greenhouse gases from human activities," he stated.
The Bonn meeting is expected to draft a "rulebook" for the Paris Agreement, which aims to end the fossil fuel era in the second half of the century by shifting the global economy towards cleaner energy sources such as wind and solar.
“These findings underscore the growing risks to people, economies and the very fabric of life on Earth if we fail to get back on track with the goals and ambitions of the Paris Agreement,” said Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UN Global Climate Change Commission, who is chairing the Bonn summit.