My Climate Change News

Temperatures soared 10C above average last month in Siberia, home to much of the Earth's permafrost, as the world experienced its hottest May on record. The Copernicus Climate Change Service, which acts as the European Union's climate monitoring network, said May 2020 was 0.68C warmer than the average May from 1981 to 2010, with above average temperatures across parts of Alaska, Europe, North America, South America, swathes of Africa and Antarctica. Globally, "the average temperature for the twelve months to May 2020 is close to 1.3C above the (pre-industrial) level", Copernicus said, referring to the benchmark by which global warming is often measured. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nearly 200 countries have pledged to cap the rise in average surface temperature to "well below" 2C, and to 1.5C if possible. The heatwave across parts of Siberia and Alaska will cause particular alarm in regions that were engulfed by huge forest fires last year fuelled by record heat, and wh