Scientists blame human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas with an extra push from a natural El Nino.
warm August capping a season of brutal and deadly temperatures, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.
Scientists blame human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas with an extra push from a natural El Nino, which is a temporary warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide. Usually an El Nino, which started earlier this year, adds extra heat to global temperatures but more so in its second year.
Copernicus, a division of the European Union's space program, has records going back to 1940, but in the United Kingdom and the United States, global records go back to the mid 1800s and those weather and science agencies are expected to soon report that the summer was a record-breaker. Scientists have used tree rings, ice cores and other proxies to estimate that temperatures are now warmer than they have been in about 120,000 years. The world has been warmer before, but that was prior to human civilisation, seas were much higher and the poles were not icy.
"Antarctic sea ice extent was literally off the charts, and the global sea surface temperature was once again at a new record," WMO's secretary-general, Petteri Taalas, said in a statement released to the media. A strong El Nino coincided with the all-time high temperatures in 2016. The UN weather agency earlier this year rolled out predictions that suggest Earth would within the next five years have a year that averages 1.5 degrees warmer than in the mid 19th century. Each year at or near 1.5 matters.
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