Last year was the hottest in history across Europe as temperature records were shattered by a series of extreme heat waves, the EU’s satellite monitoring surface said on Wednesday.
In its annual report on the state of the climate, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (CS3) said that 11 of the continent’s 12 warmest years on record have been since 2000, as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
Warm conditions and summer heat waves contributed to widespread drought across southern Europe, while areas of the Arctic were close to 1°C hotter than a typical year, it said.
Overall, temperatures across Europe have been 2°C hotter during the past five years than they were in the latter half of the 19th century, the data showed.
Last year was second-hottest globally only to 2016, a year that experienced an exceptionally strong El Nino warming event.
C3S director Carlo Buontempo said that although last year was Europe’s hottest year on record, it was important to focus on the continent’s long-term heating.
“One exceptional warm year does not constitute a warming trend, but to have detailed information from our operational service, that covers many different aspects of our climate, we are able to connect the dots to learn more about how it is changing,” he said.
Some parts of Europe experienced periods up to 4°C hotter than the historic baseline last year, and heat waves — notably in June and July — saw temperature records shattered in France, Germany and the UK.
The Paris Agreement commits nations to limit global temperature rises to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
To do so, and to stand any hope of meeting the agreement’s more ambitious cap of 1.5°C of warming, the UN says emissions from fossil fuel use must fall 7.6 percent annually by 2030.
Although carbon pollution levels are expected to drop significantly this year due to the economic slowdown from the COVID-19 pandemic, there are fears that emissions would surge back once a vaccine is found.
“The response to the COVID-19 crisis could exacerbate the climate crisis if bailouts of the fossil fuel industry and fossil-intensive sectors are not conditional on a transition to clean technologies,” said Cameron Hepburn, director of the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.
Andrew Shepherd, director of the University of Leeds’ Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, said that C3S’s data was all the more worrying as it foreshadowed accelerated melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
“We can’t avoid the rapid changes in climate that are happening around our planet, even if they occur miles away in the polar regions, because they affect our weather today and will affect our coastlines in the future,” he said.
British Antarctic Survey climate scientist Anna Jones said that she was not surprised by the findings.
“Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are obstinately increasing as a result of human activity,” she said.
“With this rise come changes in our climate — warming trends and events of extreme weather,” Jones said.
“For things to improve, we need massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions — there is no other way,” she added.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion