By Alex Pashley with additional reporting from Betul Yuruk contributed in Geneva
LIMA, Peru
This year is poised to become the hottest on record, according to a new report that bolsters the case for action as UN climate talks here get underway.
At the current pace, 2014 will outstrip 2010’s record, if November and December temperatures follow trends observed in the first 10 months of the year.
Global temperatures across land and sea rose 1.03 F (0.57 C) above the 1961-1990 average of 14 C from January through October.
“The year 2014 is on track to the warmest or one of the warmest years on record,” said Jeremiah Lengoasa, Deputy Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, or WMO, at the UN climate summit on Wednesday.
Sea surface temperatures also hit new highs, rising 0.45 C above the 1961-1990 average. Arctic sea ice receded its sixth-greatest amount ever in September.
The findings support a mounting body of scientific evidence that has “successfully raised the voice of alarm in policy,” said Christina Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, at the report’s publication.
Figueres called on delegates at the two-week conference to acknowledge the “urgency of action” and move toward decarbonization.
Envoys are negotiating a global pact to be signed next year in Paris, which for the first time will bind all 194 nations to reducing emissions.
Above-average temperature increases have plateaued in the last decade, which some observers say indicates global warming is slowing.
But any “hiatus” was firmly dismissed by the report’s publication.
“We will have peaks and valleys in temperatures, we will see that from year to year,” Figueres said. “It’s very clear that every single decade was warmer than the previous.”
"There is no standstill in global warming," WMO Secretary-General Michael Jarraud said.
"The provisional information for 2014 means that 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred in the 21st century."
The oceans, which absorb up to 90 percent of heat, moreover downplayed the true scale of climate change.
“Heat is being absorbed by the ocean.” Figueres said. “The acidification of the oceans is not to be underestimated.”
Heat waves in Brazil and Argentina, and severe droughts in China and the United States were evidence of climate change this year, the WMO said.
The WMO global temperature analysis is based on three complementary datasets in the United States and United Kingdom.
The organization will finalize its preliminary estimates next March.
www.aa.com.tr/en
