2021 was earth’s fifth-hottest year on record: EU climate agency

Europe, News January 12, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

The year 2021 was recorded as the world’s fifth-hottest year, while the last seven years were the earth’s warmest “by a clear margin” since records began, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in a report.

According to the C3S report, the levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, which is causing global warming, hit new records in 2021.

“The last seven years were the warmest on record, with 2021 5th but with a small margin to 2015 and 2018,” the C3S agency posted on its Twitter.

CS3 Director Carlo Buontempo said, “The year 2021 was yet another year of extreme temperatures with the hottest summer in Europe, heatwaves in the Mediterranean, not to mention the unprecedented high temperatures in North America.”

“These events are a stark reminder of the need to change our ways, take decisive and effective steps toward a sustainable society and work towards reducing net carbon emissions,” Carlo Buontempo warned.

According to climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, in 2021 more than 400 weather stations around the world beat their all-time highest temperature records.

Earlier in August 2021, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information reported that July was recorded as Earth’s hottest month.

*^{A map of the world plotted with some of the most significant climate events that occurred during July 2021. (Image Credit: NOAA NCEI)}*

NOAA Administrator Dr. Rick Spinrad said, “July is typically the world’s warmest month of the year, but July 2021 outdid itself as the hottest July and month ever recorded. This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe.”

One of the key events of 2021 that the climatological community noticed was the “extreme heatwave” that struck the west coast of the United States in June and July 2021. The heatwaves in the summer of 2021 broke records in several places. Climatologist Maximiliano Herrera described it as the “mother of all heatwaves”, which “struck every single climatologist and meteorologist in the world.”

“I confess, I would have never believed this to be even physically impossible. The magnitude of this event surpassed anything I have seen after a life of researching extreme events in all modern world climatic history in the past couple of centuries,” Herrera said.

*^{An area of the Amazon cleared with a slash-and-burn technique. In this method, forest is cut down, allowed to dry out, and then burned to clear the land for agriculture. (Image Credit: Jos Barlow)}*

China Meteorological Administration reported that 2021 was the hottest ever year for China. According to Deputy head of the National Climate Centre Jia Xiaolong, the situation in 2021 had been abnormal. “Warming was the main theme of China’s climate in 2021. In the context of global warming, recurrent extreme weather and climate events have become the norm, which is also a major challenge to disaster prevention and mitigation,” Xiaolong said.