Man-made climate change was the main contributor to what has been the warmest decade, the UK weather service said in a study backed up by Nasa data showing the five years to 2019 were the hottest since records began.
With deadly bushfires raging across large parts of Australia, the UK’s Met Office said that the ten years to 2019 were the warmest since it first began taking measurements in 1850.
“The main contributor to warming over the last 170 years is human influence on climate from increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” the Met Office said on Wednesday. Global temperatures in 2019 were on average 1.05C above pre-industrial levels and this year could be hotter, the British weather service said.