The year did see some significant advancements, including significant new legislation to assist vulnerable countries to cope with escalating climate change impacts.
However, with carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, the primary cause of global warming, on course to reach an all-time high in 2022, the goal of keeping warming within a safer limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial period appears to be in jeopardy.
Experts Warn About Worsening Climate Change
Antonio Guterres, the head of the United Nations, cautioned world leaders at a climate summit in Egypt in November that mankind must choose between cooperating in the fight against global warming and committing collective suicide.
With the release of a historic report on climate impacts in February that has been nicknamed an atlas of human suffering, UN climate science experts this year delivered their strongest warning yet about the dangers confronting people and the world.
At only 1.2C of warming since then, a string of extreme occurrences have demonstrated the escalating risks of climate change.
While drought in the Horn of Africa has forced millions to the brink of hunger, record heatwaves have destroyed crops from China to Europe.
Pakistan was inundated by floods exacerbated by climate change, which affected 33 million people and cost the country $30 billion in damage and economic losses.
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Major Heat Is Coming
The Met Office predicts that next year’s average temperatures will be approximately 1.2 degrees Celsius above what they were before people began driving climate change.
The UK Met Office expects that next year will be one of the hottest on record, with average worldwide temperatures almost 1.2 degrees Celsius above what they were before people began driving climate change.
If accurate, this would be the tenth consecutive year in which world average temperatures reached at least 1C above what they were during pre-industrial periods (1850-1900).
The 2016 is the hottest year since records began in 1850, a year in which an El Nino climate pattern in the Pacific pushed global temperatures higher on top of global warming trends.
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