2015 on pace for record-hot year

Global 58.23 degrees F in 2014 ‘certain’ to fall, monitor says

Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said Wednesday in Geneva that “a significant impact of climate change is on extreme events.”
Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said Wednesday in Geneva that “a significant impact of climate change is on extreme events.”

WASHINGTON -- Because of global warming and a strong El Nino, Earth's weather this year is torching the annual heat record, the World Meteorological Organization announced Wednesday.

photo

AP

An Indian man rests in front of an air cooler to cool himself May 31 in Hyderabad, in the southern Indian state of Telangana.

The United Nations weather agency's early-bird report on 2015 says it is the hottest year on record, surpassing last year's record heat. It made the proclamation without waiting for the end of the year because it has been extraordinarily warm and is unlikely to cool down enough not to set a record.

The report comes the week before world leaders assemble in Paris to try to negotiate an agreement to fight global warming.

"We have really broken records almost everywhere," the agency's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, said Wednesday at a news conference in Geneva. "Remember climate change is not only about temperature ... but a significant impact of climate change is on extreme events."

The report is not surprising: Scientists at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and elsewhere already were saying that 2015 likely would be the hottest. The U.N. agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and Japan's weather agency all say 2014 is the current record hot year with a global temperature of 58.23 degrees Fahrenheit.

"I would call it certain," NOAA's chief climate monitor, Deke Arndt, said Tuesday. "Something game-changing massive would have to happen for it not to be a record."

Records go back to 1880.

Jarraud also said it is likely that the world has now warmed by 1.8 F over pre-industrial times. That's a symbolic milestone: International leaders have set a goal of keeping global warming within 3.6 F of pre-industrial times.

"There is urgency because we already have 1 degree [Celsius] behind us and at the rate that the emissions are increasing, there is not much flexibility," Jarraud said. "But it is still possible to do it, provided there is a strong decision in Paris."

Gavin Schmidt, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, called the U.N. report a fair summary, adding: "2015 is going to be exceptional in many ways."

The report says the world is warming because of heat-trapping gases that come from the burning of coal, oil and gas. On top of that, El Nino, a naturally occurring climate event that starts with warm water in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, makes the world even warmer, scientists say.

The report is an atlas of extreme weather, from heat waves in Pakistan and India -- where high temperatures broke 113 F -- to a record strong Hurricane Patricia in Mexico. It included heavy rains and flooding in the southern United States, Mexico, Bolivia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and droughts in the western United States, central Europe, Russia and Southeast Asia.

Information for this article was contributed by Jamey Keaten of The Associated Press.

A Section on 11/26/2015

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