State of the Warming Climate in 2016: 'Truly Uncharted Territory’

Arctic ice melted to new lows in 2016, temperatures soared to scorching highs and extreme weather rocked all parts of the planet.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released its annual State of Global Climate report on Tuesday, noting a year of broken records and extreme weather events—climate change trends that are continuing into 2017.

"This report confirms that the year 2016 was the warmest on record—a remarkable 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. That temperature rise marks a 0.06 degrees Celsius increase over the record set in 2015. The Paris climate agreement commits the world's nations to holding the atmospheric temperature increase to below 2 degrees Celsius, to try to stave off potentially catastrophic global warming.

Much of that increased warmth was centered in the Arctic in 2016, where mean temperatures hit at least 3 degrees Celsius above the average from 1961-90 in some areas. Norway's Svalbard Airport, in the high Arctic, reported an average temperature of -0.1 degrees, which was 6.5 degrees above the 1961-90 average and 1.6 degrees above the previous record.

Read the Inside Climate News story - “State of the Warming Climate in 2016: 'Truly Uncharted Territory’.”