2017 will be among three hottest years on record: UN

The United Nations has warned that 2017 is set to be one of the three hottest years the planet Earth has ever experienced.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a report on Monday that temperatures in 2017 would be slightly lower than 2016, but roughly on par with those recorded in 2015, warning that the trend seen over these three years has already confirmed speculations that Earth is becoming warmer and warmer.

The report by the WMO said average surface temperatures recorded from January to September this year were about 1.1C above the pre-industrial era.

A landmark climate agreement reached in Paris in 2015 aims to keep the average global warming to around an ideal target of 1.5C or as the text of the pact says “well below” two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.

Petteri Talaas, head of the WMO, said extreme events, including a spate of hurricanes in the Atlantic and Caribbean, monsoon floods in Asia and drought in East Africa, have clearly proved that weather conditions across the world have become more alarming.

“We have witnessed extraordinary weather,” said Talaas at the beginning the UN’s global climate talks in the German city of Bonn aimed at bolstering the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Around 200 countries are attending the Bonn conference from November 6-17, a meeting which many say is an attempt to make up for the losses created by the US decision to withdraw from the Paris deal.

President Donald Trump said in June he would pull out of the Paris agreement and instead promote US fossil fuels.

Trump’s administration has labeled the Paris agreement as too protective for China and other emerging powers.

The conference in Bonn aims to produce a detailed rule book for the Paris agreement and spur more action on climate before November 4, 2020, the earliest date any country can withdraw from the agreement, under the rules of the deal.

According to reports, Washington has sent a smaller delegation of experts to the conference in Bonn compared to the previous editions. The team is headed by career diplomat Thomas Shannon who once said that climate change was “one of the world’s biggest challenges.”

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