Global temperatures in 2020 were among the highest on record and rivaled 2016 as the hottest year ever, according to international data compiled by the World Meteorological Organization.
The heat came even as a global economic slowdown from the COVID-19 pandemic cut deeply into emissions from fossil fuels, adding evidence that carbon dioxide concentrations already in the atmosphere have set the planet on a warming track.
The WMO report included data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the UK Met Office, both of which ranked 2020 as the second-warmest year on record, as a cooling trend called La Niña failed to tame global temperatures. NASA, whose data was also included, said 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record.
WMO said the differences in average global temperatures among the three warmest years, 2016, 2019 and 2020, were indistinguishably small. The average global temperature in 2020 was about 14.9 C (59 F), or about 1.2 C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level. That approached the preferred 1.5 C lower limit of temperature increase the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate sought to avert.
All five datasets surveyed by WMO showed that 2011-2020 was the warmest decade on record, and NOAA said the seven warmest years since record-keeping began in 1880 have occurred since 2014.
There is at least a one-in-five chance that the average global temperature will temporarily exceed that limit by 2024, according to a WMO analysis, led by the UK Met Office, Reuters reported.
