Recent research shows that stopping greenhouse gas emissions will break the vicious cycle of warming temperatures, melting ice, wildfires and rising sea levels faster than expected just a few years ago. That's one of several unexpected developments around climate change last year.
Calendar year 2020 was an extreme and abnormal year, in so many ways. The global coronavirus pandemic altered people’s lives around the world, as did extreme weather and climate events. Let’s review the year’s top 10 such events.
1. Hottest Year on Record?
The official rankings will not be released until January 14, but according to NASA, Earth’s average surface temperature in 2020 is likely to tie with 2016 for the hottest year on record, making the last seven years the seven hottest on record.
Remarkably, the record warmth of 2020 occurred during a minimum in the solar cycle and in a year in which a moderate La Niña event formed. Surface cooling of the tropical Pacific during La Niña events typically causes a slight global cool-down, as does the minimum of the solar cycle, making it difficult to set all-time heat records. The record heat of 2020 in these circumstances is a demonstration of how powerful human causes of global warming have become.
Many Scientists Now Say Global Warming Could Stop Relatively Quickly After Emissions Go to Zero
That’s one of several recent conclusions about climate change that came more sharply into focus in 2020.
January 3, 2021
Icebergs near Ilulissat, Greenland. Climate change is having a profound effect in Greenland with glaciers and the Greenland ice cap retreating. Credit: Ulrik Pedersen/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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Parts of the world economy may have been on pause during 2020, dampening greenhouse gas emissions for a while. But that didn’t slow the overall buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which reached its highest level in millions of years.
“Both 2020 and 2016 have had very similar year-to-date temperatures,” Dr Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute in California, tells
The Independent. “A little more or less warming in December could push us slightly above or slightly below.”
Several different research organisations across the world keep track of how global average temperatures are changing from year to year. In Europe, the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre and EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service monitor global temperatures. In the US, it falls to Nasa, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Berkeley Earth.
The top 10 weather and climate events of a record-setting year
Calendar year 2020 was an extreme and abnormal year, in so many ways. The global coronavirus pandemic altered people’s lives around the world, as did extreme weather and climate events. Let’s review the year’s top 10 such events.
1. Hottest year on record?
The official rankings will not be released until January 14, but according to NASA, Earth’s average surface temperature in 2020 is likely to tie with 2016 for the hottest year on record, making the last seven years the seven hottest on record.
Remarkably, the record warmth of 2020 occurred during a minimum in the solar cycle and in a year in which a moderate La Niña event formed. Surface cooling of the tropical Pacific during La Niña events typically causes a slight global cool-down, as does the minimum of the solar cycle, making it difficult to set all-time heat records. The record heat of 2020 in these circumstances is a demonstration of how powerful hu