UNITED NATIONS, United States, Sept 22, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Average global
temperature between 2015-2019 is on track to be the hottest of any five-year
period on record, a UN report by the world’s leading climate agencies said
Sunday.
“It is currently estimated to be 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial
(1850-1900) times and 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer than 2011-2015,” said the
report titled United in Science, a synthesis of key findings.
Other major takeaways from the report include that the extent of Arctic
summer sea ice has declined at a rate of 12 percent per decade over the past
40 years, with the four lowest values between 2015 and 2019.
Overall, the amount of ice lost from the Antarctic ice sheet increased by a
factor of six each year between 1979 and 2017, while glacier loss for 2015-19
is also the highest for any five-year period on record.
The report comes ahead of a major UN climate summit Monday that Secretary-
General Antonio Guterres has called to ask countries to raise their
greenhouse gas reduction targets.
On this metric, too, the world is failing. The report found that rather
than falling, carbon dioxide grew two percent in 2018, reaching a record high
of 37 billion tonnes.
More importantly, there is also no sign yet of reaching what is known as
“peak emissions,” the point at which levels will start to fall, though these
are not growing at the same rate as the global economy.