January 2020 set another record, the EU climate service reported: last month was the warmest January ever. Across Europe, temperatures were three degrees Celsius above the average of January from 1981 to 2010. The global record last month was 0.03C above the preceding warmest January, also in 2016.
This week, the European Union’s climate monitoring system has issued a report, which analyzes the temperature anomaly of January 2020. Not only Europe but other parts of the globe have suffered from unexpected warmth.
As the scientists say, exceptional above-average temperatures extended over nearly all of Russia as well, and they were higher than normal over much of the United States, eastern Canada, Japan and parts of eastern China.
Across a band of countries stretching from Norway to Russia, temperatures were an unprecedented 6C above the same 30-year benchmark, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported in a statement. In January, Norway and Sweden have to close their cross-country ski tracks due to abnormally warm weather.
The reason for such global warming is the burning of fossil fuels, scientists say and add that the five last years have been the hottest on record, as was the ten-year period 2010-2019.
2019 — the second warmest year — was only 0.04C below 2016, when temperatures were boosted by a powerful El Nino, a periodic natural weather phenomenon over the Pacific Ocean.
For Europe, last month was “about 0.2C warmer than the previous warmest January in 2007, and 3.1C warmer than the average January in the period 1981-2010,” C3S reported.
Temperatures were likewise higher than normal in New South Wales in Australia, where massive bushfires devastated large areas of the state.
Another alarming moment is CO2 concentration is the highest now in at least 800,000 years, according to the latest statistics. Meanwhile, the UN tresses that last year that manmade greenhouse gas emissions needed to tumble 7.6 percent annually over the next decade to cap global warming at 1.5C above preindustrial levels, the ambitious goal set in the Paris Climate Deal.
