— This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on January 16, 2020, Thursday.
Statistics from the major weather agencies vary slightly, but the trend is consistent, in addition to confirming that 2019 was the second-hottest year on record, global average temperatures in the five years from 2015 to 2019 and the decade from 2010 to 2019 were also the highest on record. Six of the world's ten hottest years have been in the past decade.
Every decade since the 1980s has been warmer than the previous, and the trend is expected to continue. Modern temperature records began in 1850.
Scientific institutions typically use the average temperature between 1850 and 1900, also known as preindustrial levels, as a baseline. According to the world meteorological organization, the average global temperature in 2019 is 1.1 degrees Celsius above that level.
That is slightly less than the 1.2 degrees Celsius recorded in 2016. So far,2016 remains the hottest year on record. But in some countries, such as Australia,2019 was the hottest year in the region.
Wildfires, from 2019 to 2020, have caused huge economic and human losses in Australia, and the rest of the world is suffering from global warming, from heat waves across Europe to floods in South America to hurricanes in Asia and storms in North America, extreme weather has affected the world economy. The effects of onion shortages triggered by floods in India have yet to be fully eliminated, and now a drought in Indonesia has decimated palm oil stocks.
The world meteorological organization's secretary general, Taalas, predicts that extreme weather events are likely to become more frequent in 2020, this is driven by record levels of greenhouse gases.
In an effort to curb global warming, signatories to the 2015 Paris agreement agreed to work together to limit temperature rises to 1.5c above pre-industrial levels. Although the United States' withdrawal poses a challenge to the pact, many countries are still working on it. On Tuesday, the European Union proposed a plan to use a quarter of its budget to combat climate change and invest 1 trillion euros over the next decade.
We will keep an eye on this issue.