2015 on track to be the hottest year ever

And 2011-2015 marked the hottest five-year period ever measured, at 0.57 C above the 1961-90 average.

Dr. Youba Sokona, vice chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned that global warming is an indisputable fact.

Barely a week to go before the major global climate negotiations at Paris comes bad news from the World Meteorological Organisation – 2015 is likely to be the warmest year in recorded history.

The year 2015 is likely to be the warmest since weather records began.

“Yes, it’s still possible to keep to the 2 degree target but the more we wait for action the more hard it will be”, WMO director-general Michel Jarraud told a news conference.

The bird report on 2015 of the specialized agency of the United Nations proclaimed this year is the hottest on record, which means the weather has broken previous year’s record.

Jarraud also said it is likely that the world has now warmed by 1.8 degrees over pre-industrial times.

Experts are optimistic that the simplest ways to slow down climate change is to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and fortunately, there are many ways to do so. One result is the ocean absorbs less heat than usual, leaving more of it to drive atmospheric temperatures higher. “Future generations will not”.

“It is now all but certain that 2015 will be the hottest year since record keeping began”.

Both said this is due a combination of a strong El Niño and human-induced global warming.

Indeed, last month was not merely the hottest October – by far – in the 135-year temperature record of NASA.

Due to the influence of El Nino, which is set to last into the middle of 2016, and continually rising levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, which come from the burning of coal, oil and gas, 2016 may even surpass those levels, the WMO says.

Fires in Indonesia, linked to the dry conditions influenced the El Nino, have also been burning for months, boosting greenhouse gas levels, researchers such CSIRO’s Pep Canadell say.

El Nino, which occurs every two to seven years, tends to naturally hike temperatures, and the WMO said it was not clear how much of this year’s record heat could be attributed to the phenomenon.

The high temperatures in 2015 fuelled many extreme weather events, today’s report notes.

WILL OCKENDEN: He says temperatures for the year will exceed almost three quarters of a degree above averages from 1961 to 1990.

Multi-year drought in parts of the USA, Australia and Africa are “consistent with projections of near and long-term climate change”, it said, adding that they had not yet been the subject of formal study.