World leaders cannot afford to ignore new record for global warming

Commenting on the publication today by NASA and NOAA of measurements of the annual global mean surface temperature in 2016, Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said: “No world leader can afford to ignore these results, which show that people all over the globe are being exposed to increasing impacts of climate change. Any politician who denies this evidence from world-class climate scientists in the United States will be wilfully turning a blind eye to rising risks that threaten the lives and livelihoods of their citizens. These results confirm that 2016 was the warmest year on record. Both agencies found that 2016 was more than 1.1 Celsius degrees warmer than the average for 1880-1899, which can be considered equivalent to the pre-industrial level. It is the second year in a row that the annual global temperature has been more than 1 Celsius degree warmer than the pre-industrial level, and shows that the world is moving ever closer to the warming threshold of 1.5 Celsius degrees, beyond which many scientists have concluded the impacts of climate change will be unacceptably dangerous. This year’s global mean surface temperature is an overall indicator of the changes in climate that are occurring all over the world. For instance, the United States recorded its second warmest year on record, behind 2012, and Europe recorded its third warmest year. The lowest maximum sea ice extent in the Arctic was recorded in March, and the minimum extent in September was the second lowest ever measured by satellites. There is evidence of further destabilisation of the major ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica, and global sea level is rising at a rate of about 3.4 centimetres per decade. The likelihood of extreme weather, including heavy rainfall and heat waves, is increasing in many parts of the world. I hope that President-Elect Trump and his team in particular will acknowledge and act on this important scientific information about the mounting risks being faced by families and businesses in the United States and across the world.”

For more information about this media release, please contact Victoria Druce on +44 (0) 20 7107 5865 or v.druce@lse.ac.uk, or Bob Ward on +44 (0) 7811 320346 or r.e.ward@lse.ac.uk

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