The past three years have been the warmest ever recorded on Earth, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The new data comes from five of the world’s foremost meteorological institutes. The calculations confirm that 2015, 2016 and 2107 are the warmest years ever recorded.
The highest global average temperature was in 2016. This was due to the effect that the weather phenomenon El Nino had on the temperature.
2017 was the warmest year registered without being affected by El Nino. However, the difference between 2015 and 2017 is very small. Less than one hundred degrees distinguishes the two years.
WMO already announced in November, in connection with the international climate conference in Bonn, that 2017 was going to be the warmest year that has not been influenced by the phenomenon of weather.
El Nino occurs naturally with two to seven years’ space when surface water in parts of the Pacific becomes abnormally hot.
The average global temperature from January to September last year was about 1.1 degrees above the pre-industrial level. Overall, the period 2013 to 2017 is the warmest recorded five-year period ever.
© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today
