Weather records broken as world faces alarming levels of change

Last year broke weather records left, right and centre, according to a new statement by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) on the status of global climate in 2015. This is included the highest level of ocean warming on record and the most extensive melting of winter sea ice in the Arctic. A billion people in South Asia also suffered an unprecedented killer heat wave. The alarming rate of change we are now witnessing in our climate as a result of green – house gas emissions is unprecedented in modern records. The WMO says that new temperature records are already being set this year, with average global air temperatures in January and February the highest for those months on record. The startlingly high temperatures so far in 2016 have sent shockwaves around the climate-science community, said David Carlson, head of the WMO’s World Climate Research Programme. But while air temperatures fluctuate with the mercury soaring in 2015 partly because of a major El Nino event – the WMO says the real signifiers of global warming are the oceans. From more than 3000 oceans temperature sensors established at the start of the century, it says that global ocean heat content reached record levels to a depth of at least 2000 meters in 2015. More than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by rising concentration of greenhouse gases finds its way into the oceans.