2018 set to be fourth hottest year on record: UN

geneva — Global temperatures in 2018 are set to be the fourth highest on record, the UN said on Thursday, stressing the urgent need for action to rein in runaway warming of the planet.

In a report released ahead of the COP 24 climate summit in Poland, the World Meteorological Organisation pointed out that the 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years, and that “2018 is on course to be the 4th warmest year on record.”

“This would mean that the past four years - 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 - are also the four warmest years in the series,” the UN agency said in its provisional report on the state of the climate this year.

The “warming trend is obvious and continuing,” WMO chief Petteri Taalas told reporters in Geneva.

The report shows that the global average temperature for the first 10 months of the year was nearly 1.0-degree Celsius above the pre-industrial era (1850-1900).

“It is worth repeating once again that we are the first generation to fully understand climate change and the last generation to be able to do something about it,” Taalas warned.

With levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the main driver of climate change, at a record high, “we may see temperature increase of 3-5C by the end of the century,” Taalas said.

“If we exploit all known fossil fuel resources, the temperature rise will be considerably higher.”

Delegations from nearly 200 countries are due in Poland next week for the latest COP24 climate summit, aimed at renewing and building on the Paris deal and limiting global warming. —