RIGA – Ongoing climate change is likely to make 2020 one of the three warmest years in the world and the warmest yet in Latvia, the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Center said, citing the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
In its provision report on the State of the Global Climate in 2020, the WMO says that from January to October the average global temperature was about 1.2 °C above the 1850–1900 baseline, used as an approximation of pre-industrial levels. According to the organization’s data, the last decade (2011 – 2020) has been the warmest on record and the six warmest years have been recorded since 2015.
Despite the Covid-19 lockdown, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases continued to rise, committing the planet to further warming for many generations to come because of the long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere, according to the report.
Ocean heat content for 2019 was highest on record in the datasets going back to 1960. There is a clear signal for faster heat uptake in recent decades. More than 90 percent of the excess energy accumulating in the climate system as a result of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases goes into the ocean, the WMO said.
In Latvia, the median January-November temperature was 9.5 °C, or 2.3 °C above the norm. This year is on track to become the warmest in Latvia on record as December temperatures are unlikely to be low enough to keep the average temperature for the full 2020 within the norm.
This year, Latvia has seen the warmest winter and the warmest fall, with temperatures staying above the norm also in the spring and summer. Half of this year’s months in Latvia have been among the warmest on record, while the average volume of precipitation from January to November was 613 millimeters, or four percent below the norm.
