2016 stacking up to be hottest year on record

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

November 14, 2016 | 3:22 PM

Mosa'ab Elshamy / AP Photo

Climate protesters in Marrakech urged world leaders to take action last week. The World Meteorological Organization released a report today showing 2016 shaping up to be the hottest year on record so far.#39;ab Elshamy / AP Photo

It’s another record breaking year for global warming. 2016 is expected to surpass temperature records broken last year, according to the United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization, which announced its report during the global climate talks in Marrakech on Monday. The organization says average temperatures for the first nine months of the year reached about 1.2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
“Another year. Another record. The high temperatures we saw in 2015 are set to be beaten in 2016,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. The extra heat from the powerful El Niño event has disappeared. The heat from global warming will continue,” he said.
Taalas said that the El Nino weather pattern had much to do with temperature spikes in the winter months, contributing to ocean warming and above-average sea level rise. In the Arctic, temperatures were 6 to 7° warmer. And he said extreme weather events were connected to these changes.
“Because of climate change, the occurrence and impact of extreme events has risen. ‘Once in a generation’ heatwaves and flooding are becoming more regular. Sea level rise has increased exposure to storm surges associated with tropical cyclones,” he said.
The most damaging of those events was Hurricane Matthew in October, which killed 546 Haitians, caused damage in Cuba, the Bahamas, and South Carolina.
Reporting for this story was supported by the International Reporting Project.