2016 remains on track to be hottest on record: WMO

The World Meteorological Organization(WMO) Tuesday said the year 2016 remains on track to be the hottest year on record, with average global temperatures set to break even the records of 2015.

According to data covering the first 11 months of the year,temperatures spiked in the early months of 2016 because of a very strong El Nino event and remained well above the long-term average for the latter part of the year.

Long-term indicators of human-caused climate change, including record carbon dioxide concentrations, and glacier melt, and low sea ice, continued.

WMO will issue consolidated figures on 2016 global temperatures in early 2017. December data confirms WMO's assessment issued in November that 2016 will very likely be the hottest since records began in the mid 1880s.

The WMO provisional statement on the climate in 2016, released for the United Nations Climate Change conference in Marrakech, Morocco, cited preliminary data (to the end of September) that 2016's global temperatures are approximately 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Temperatures in the Arctic have been particularly high. As a result, Arctic sea ice was exceptionally low, especially during early 2016 and the October-November re-freezing period. Antarctic ice extent was also the lowest on record in November, in contrast to the trend of recent years.

Scientific studies are increasingly proving the link between extreme weather -- especially heat -- and human-induced climate change from greenhouse gases. Endit