The European Union’s climate monitoring network has announced that April 2020 is the warmest April since the record began. This latest announcement adds to the already alarming trend of record-breaking temperatures registered in the first quarter of 2020. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported that global temperatures in April 2020 were statistically negligible less than in April 2016. The record further indicates that 2020 will probably be the warmest year on record.
Globally, the regions that experienced the most above-average temperatures were Siberia, northern and central Greenland, the Alaskan coast, as well as parts of Antarctica and the Arctic Ocean. The Polar Regions also saw lower average sea ice cover than the 1981-2010 average. While global average temperatures continue to rise, local temperatures may fluctuate unexpectedly. For April, it was found mostly in Central Canada and South and Southeast Asia, all of which were cooler than usual.
Europe was warmer than the average temperature in the western part of the continent and the colder regions in the northeast saw a dry and hot month across most continents. Rainfall fell mainly in the Iberian Peninsula and in the cooler eastern part of Europe. The brightest month has been seen in Switzerland. The alpine country’s average temperature in April was 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average of the last 30 years and was about 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average of 1871-1900. It was also the warmest April for France.
Located near the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.6 degrees Fahrenheit) established as a criterion to avoid in the 2013 Paris Climate Agreement, the last 12 months have risen 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.34 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Based on current trends and without significant political changes, this marginalization will be met in 2030. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (only one and a half years) humanity has released an incredible amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Chief among them is carbon dioxide, which has reached unseen levels for at least 800,000 years.
Staying below the 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) cap, the UN says we need to reduce our annual missions 7.6 percent over the next decade. Emissions are expected to fall by 8 percent this year due to the exceptional circumstances of the Covid-1p epidemic.
