PARIS, April 22, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Last year was the hottest in history
across Europe as temperature records were shattered by a series of extreme
heatwaves across the continent, the European Union’s satellite monitoring
surface said Wednesday.
In its annual report on the state of the climate, the EU’s Copernicus
Climate Change Service (C3S) said that 11 of the continent’s 12 warmest years
on record have been since 2000 as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
Warm conditions and summer heatwaves contributed to widespread drought
across southern Europe, while areas of the Arctic were close to one degree
Celsius hotter than a typical year, it said.
Overall, temperatures across Europe have been 2C hotter during the last five
years than they were in the latter half of the 19th Century, C3S’s data showed.
2019 globally was second-hottest only to 2016, a year that experienced an
exceptionally strong El Nino warming event.
C3S director Carlo Buontempo said that while 2019 was Europe’s hottest year
on record, it was important to focus on the continent’s long-term heating.
“One exceptional warm year does not constitute a warming trend, but to have
detailed information from our operational service, that covers many different
aspects of our climate, we are able to connect the dots to learn more about
how it is changing,” he said.
Some parts of Europe experienced periods up to 4C hotter than the historic
baseline last year, and heatwaves — notably in June and July — saw
temperature records shattered in France, Germany and Britain.
The Paris climate deal commits nations to limit global temperature rises to
“well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels.
To do so, and to stand any hope of meeting the accord’s more ambitious cap
of 1.5C of warming, the UN says emissions from fossil fuel use must fall 7.6
percent annually by 2030.
While carbon pollution levels are expected to drop significantly in 2020 due
to the economic slowdown from the COVID-19 pandemic, there are fears that
emissions will surge back once a vaccine is found.
“The response to the COVID-19 crisis could exacerbate the climate crisis if
bailouts of the fossil fuel industry and fossil-intensive sectors are not
conditional on a transition to clean technologies,” said Cameron Hepburn,
director of the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the
Environment.
Andrew Shepherd, director of the University of Leeds’ Centre for Polar
Observation and Modelling, said C3S’s data was all the more worrying as it
foreshadowed accelerated melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
“We can’t avoid the rapid changes in climate that are happening around our
planet, even if they occur miles away in the polar regions, because they
affect our weather today and will affect our coastlines in the future,” he
said.