By Jonathan Watts
This year has broken a series of unwelcome weather records. Last month was the warmest November in history. This followed the hottest January, May and September. All-time temperature peaks were registered from the Antarctic to the Arctic.
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The coronavirus pandemic may have dominated the news and temporarily reduced emissions. But 2020 has also demonstrated the increasingly evident impact of human-driven global heating. The six hottest years in human history have all occurred since 2014.
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Scientists are surprised temperatures have been so high in the absence of an El Niño, the phenomenon that boosts warmer years such as the current record, 2016. On the contrary, the latter half of this year there was the emergence of a cooling La Niña, which churned up chillier-than-normal waters in the equatorial Pacific.
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In climate terms, the long-term trend is more important than individual records, but it is the latter that directly affects lives and livelihoods.
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