2016 set to be hottest year on record - WMO

The world is set to notch up a new heat record in 2016 after a sizzling 2015 as global warming stokes more floods and rising sea levels, the UN weather agency said.


The agency made the announcement at climate change talks overshadowed by Donald Trump's US election win.

President-elect Trump has called climate change a hoax.

A source in his transition team says he is seeking quick ways to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to shift the world economy away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said this year would be the warmest since records began in the late 19th century, with average surface temperatures 1.2C above pre-industrial times.

Sixteen of the 17 hottest years recorded have been in this century.

"Another year. Another record," WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement in Marrakesh, Morocco, where almost 200 nations are discussing ways to slow climate change.

The heat, with impacts such as melting Greenland ice and damage to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, was stoked by an El Nino weather event in the Pacific early in the year and by man-made greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels.
 rte.ie
14/11/16