Siberia 10C hotter in warmest May on record: EU
Temperatures soared 10 degrees Celsius above average last month in Siberia, home to much of Earth's permafrost, as the world experienced its hottest May on record, the European Union's climate monitoring network said Friday.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said May 2020 was 0.68C warmer than the average May from 1981 to 2010, with above average temperatures across elements of Alaska, Europe, THE UNITED STATES, SOUTH USA, swathes of Africa and Antarctica.
Globally, "the average temperature for the twelve months to May 2020 is close to 1.3C above the (pre-industrial) level", Copernicus said referring to the benchmark where global warming is normally measured.
Beneath the 2015 Paris Agreement, nearly 200 countries have pledged to cap the rise in Earth average surface temperature to "well below" 2C, and 1.5C when possible.
The heatwave across elements of Siberia and Alaska may cause particular alarm in regions that were engulfed by huge forest fires this past year fuelled by record heat, and where Copernicus has warned that "zombie" blazes smouldering underground could be reigniting.
The monitoring network said that there have been "highly anomalous" temperatures over Siberia through the entire March to May period. These reached near 10C above the 1981 to 2010 average over elements of the Ob and Yenisei rivers, where "record-early break-up of river ice has been reported".
Copernicus recorded above average temperatures around much of the Arctic between March to May, although the spring was colder in northern Canada. Elements of Europe -- from the Balkans to Scandinavia -- also saw cooler than average temperatures in May, as did Australia, southern Asia and eastern USA.
The 12 months to May were 0.7C hotter than the 1981 to 2010 average, matching the warmest equivalent period on record, between October 2015 and September 2016.Overall, global temperatures have risen more than one degree Celsius since mid-19th century levels, driven mostly by the burning fossil fuels.
There's been a sustained period of above-average temperatures since 2002, as the last five years have been the latest on record, as was the last decade.In the Arctic region average temperatures have risen by two degrees Celsius because the mid-19th century, almost twice the global average.
It has accelerated melting of Greenland's kilometres-thick ice sheet, resulting in a net lack of 600 billion tonnes of ice mass for the entire year accounting for approximately 40 percent of total sea level rise in 2019.The permafrost in Russian and Canadian forests contains up to 1.5 trillion tonnes of skin tightening and -- around 40 times current total annual emissions.
The United Nations said this past year that manmade greenhouse gas emissions needed to tumble 7.6 percent annually over the next decade to cap global warming at 1.5C.Current pledges to cut emissions put Earth on a path of several degrees warming by the finish of the century.
