The year 2016 ended with being crowned as the warmest year on record by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and it seems 2017 is also following the footprints. The powerful 2015/2014 El Niño also contributed to the heating 2016.
The Arctic also welcomed the year 2017 with extreme heatwave conditions. Wherein, the global temperatures that soared high last year have resulted in shrinking sea ice which has dropped more than four million square kilometers below average in November in 2015.
The extent of extreme weather conditions can also be made out of the fact that only thrice have the Arctic has witnessed the Polar equivalent of a heatwave. This means that there were even days of melting. Moreover, the Antarctic Sea ice has also observed a record low.
The extreme weather conditions also did not prove to be beneficial in abating the ocean heat, says the UN weather agency. This could be easily traced by the illustrations of swelling sea level for most of the year. This is alarming for people around the world.
Moreover, as the levels of carbon-di-oxide are also reaching towards high emission levels, the effect of human actions have also become more evident.
As per WMO, ever since the record-keeping was initiated during the late 19 century, the average global temperature which was 0.06 above the pre-industrial era in 2015 has seen a significant rise of 1.1 degrees in 2016.
As compared with the long-term average for the 1961-1990 base period, each year since 2001, has seen temperatures rising at least 0.4°C above. In fact, the extreme weather condition also resulted in Coral Reef bleaching thereby hampering the morality of the marine life.
Due to the effect of global warming, balmy weather conditions also prevailed over the regions of Canada and most parts of the US. On the contrary, freezing cold weather stayed in parts of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa.
The year 2016 was also a spectator of severe droughts that hampered the livelihood in South and East Africa.
Image Credit: motherjones.com
Any information taken from here should be credited to skymetweather.com
