The year 2019 was the second hottest on record for the planet’s surface, according to latest research. The analyses reveal the scale of the climate crisis: both the past five years and the past decade are the hottest in 150 years.
The succession of records being broken year after year is “the drumbeat of the Anthropocene”, said one scientist, and is bringing increasingly severe storms, floods, droughts and wildfires.
The previous hottest year was in 2016, the year that a natural El Niño event boosted temperatures. The new data is for the average global surface air temperature. More than 90% of the heat trapped by human greenhouse gas emissions is absorbed by the oceans, but on Monday scientists revealed 2019 as the warmest yet recorded in the seas, calling it “dire news”.