Science 2 min read

The 2010s was the Hottest Decade Ever on Record

Vadim Sadovski / Shuttesrtock.com

Vadim Sadovski / Shuttesrtock.com

One of the hottest years, 2019, wraps up the hottest decade on record, says the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Thomas Stevenson introduced the thermometer screen, which shelters meteorological equipment, in the mid-1800s. Since then, we started measuring weather conditions more efficiently, piling up “climate records.”

This is why you may see a headline like ours today claiming this month or that year was the warmest on record.

Only this time, it’s about the past decade, the 2010s, and it doesn’t bode well for what is to come in the following decades.

Hottest Decade: 2010-2019 Rise in Temperature has Never Been Observed Before

As the past decade brought many climate science breakthroughs, it had its fair share of climate-related disorders.

During the 2010s, temperature records worldwide went through the roof due to all the greenhouse gases produced by human activities. As a result, the world witnessed wildfires, floods, ice melting, heat waves, droughts, and other increasingly frequent and powerful extreme weather events.

In fact, the 2010-2019 decade was the warmest on record globally.

Since the global climate record began around 1880, the world has never seen a decade as hot as the 2010s, according to the WMO.

The five-year (2015-2019) and ten-year (2010-2019) averages are, respectively, almost certain to be the warmest five-year period and decade on record. Since the 1980s, each successive decade has been warmer than the last,” we read in the WMO’s report.

“If we do not take urgent climate action now, then we are heading for a temperature increase of more than 3°C by the end of the century, with ever more harmful impacts on human wellbeing,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“We are nowhere near on track to meet the Paris Agreement target.”

WMO’s provisional “State of the Global Climate” report was released on the occasion of COP25, held 2 – 13 December 2019 in Spain.

It doesn’t matter if 2019 winds up as the second or third hottest year since records began. Last year ended a cycle of ten years that were the warmest ten years ever globally since the 140-year global climate record began.

The record warmth of the 2010s is a wake-up call for humanity to take urgent climate action, or is it?

Read More: Fix Earth, Instead of Looking for a Planet B!

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Zayan Guedim

Trilingual poet, investigative journalist, and novelist. Zed loves tackling the big existential questions and all-things quantum.

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