Europe is heating faster than the global average as new data indicates that last year was the warmest on record. While globally the year was the second warmest, a series of heatwaves helped push the region to a new high mark. Over the past five years, global temperatures were, on average, just over 1C warmer than at the end of the 19th century. In Europe, in the same period, temperatures were almost 2C warmer.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says the physical signs of climate change and impacts on our planet have gathered pace in the past five years, which were the hottest on record. The European data, which comes from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Service, 11 of the 12 warmest years on record on the continent have occurred since 2000. The European State of the Climate 2019 shows that warm conditions and summer heatwaves saw drought in many parts of central Europe. While the UK saw a new all-time high temperature recorded in Cambridge in July, in many places across the continent, the weather was 3-4C warmer than normal.
This is reflected in the amount of sunshine that hit Europe across the year. The number of sunshine hours was the largest on record. Commenting on the Earth Day anniversary, the WMO’s secretary general, Petteri Taalas, said it was important to continue tackling climate change amid the global pandemic. “Whilst COVID-19 has caused a severe international health and economic crisis, failure to tackle climate change may threaten human well-being, ecosystems and economies for centuries,” he said. “We need to flatten both the pandemic and climate change curves.”
Source: BBC
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