For the first time on record, global warming has exceeded temperatures of 1.5 C over a 12-month period, European Union climate scientists reported this week.
The EU agency blamed human-caused climate change and the El Niño weather phenomenon that warms the Pacific Ocean for driving the record heat over the past year.
This week, officials with B.C.’s River Forecast Centre said the province’s snowpack is almost 40 per cent lower than normal for this time of year.
Although El Niño has began to weaken in the equatorial Pacific, marine air temperatures in general remained “at an unusually high level” in January, the EU agency added.
As part of the 2015 Paris Agreement, world leaders pledged to limit temperature rise to 1.5 C, which climate scientists argue to critical to limit disasters like heat waves, floods drought and wildfire.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned the world is not on track to meet those targets.
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