The average global temperature between 2015-2019 is on its way to being the hottest of any five-year period recorded, a United Nations report from the world's leading climate agencies said on Sunday.
"It is currently estimated to be 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times (1850-1900) and 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer than 2011-2015," said the report titled United in Science, a synthesis of key findings.
Other important findings of the report include that the extent of sea ice in the Arctic summer has declined at a rate of 12{7be40b84a6a43fc4fae13304fce9a2695859798abfc41afd127b9f8b21c5f9c5} per decade in the past 40 years, with the four lowest values between 2015 and 2019.
Overall, the amount of lost ice in the Antarctic ice sheet increased by a factor of six each year between 1979 and 2017, while the loss of glaciers for 2015-19 is also the highest in any recorded five-year period.
The report is ahead of a major UN climate summit on Monday that Secretary General Antonio Guterres called to ask countries to increase their greenhouse gas reduction targets.
In this metric, too, the world is failing. The report found that, instead of falling, carbon dioxide grew by two percent in 2018, reaching a record 37 billion tons.
More importantly, there are also no signs of reaching what is known as "maximum emissions," the point at which levels will begin to fall, although they are not growing at the same rate as the global economy.
Source: https://www.dawn.com/news/1506694/5-year-period-ending-2019-set-to-be-hottest-on-record-un-report