The Global Climate in 2011–2015

The report shows that the five-year period from 2011 to 2015 has been the warmest five-year period on record globally, with 2015 being the warmest year on record to date. The period 2011–2015 was also the warmest on record for every continent except Africa. During this period, concentrations of the major greenhouse gases continued to rise and reached record levels for the instrumental period. 

The report also examines whether human-induced climate change was directly linked to individual extreme events. Of 79 studies published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society between 2011 and 2014, more than half found that human-induced climate change contributed to the extreme event in question. Some studies found that the probability of extreme heat increased by 10 times or more.

The report further highlights some of the high-impact events. These include:

• the East African drought in 2010-2012 which caused an estimated 258,000 excess deaths and the 2013-2015 southern African drought;
• flooding in South-East Asia in 2011 which killed 800 people and caused more than US$40 billion in economic losses;
• 2015 heatwaves in India and Pakistan in 2015, which claimed more than 4,100 lives;
• Hurricane Sandy in 2012 which caused US$67 billion in economic losses in the United States of America; and
• Typhoon Haiyan which killed 7,800 people in the Philippines in 2013.