Based on a survey of the European Union’s satellite system, it released the 2021 Copernicus Climate Change Report, which last year found it was the fifth warmest year globally since regular measurements began. In 2021, the average temperature was higher than in 2015 and 2018, so the past seven years, along with last year, have become the warmest period in our planet’s history since continuous temperature documentation was made.
The average annual temperature in 2021 was 1.1 to 1.2 degrees Celsius higher than it was about 150 years before industrialization began. Although the past year started off relatively calm, in the summer months the hottest days are record-breaking. The heat wave hit the United States, Canada, northern and central regions of Africa and the Middle East.
Average temperatures in Europe in 2021 did not exceed the ten warmest years on record, but summer was the hottest documented with heat waves in July and August hitting the Mediterranean.
According to the report, the concentration of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere also increased last year. In the days after Copernicus, both NASA and the British Met Office will publish their own reports based on their measurements.
(Cover Photo: Forest fires in Greece on August 5, 2021. Gerasimus Koilakos/NoorPhoto/Getty Images)
