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This year set to be one of four hottest on record, UN report says

Reuters

GENEVA, Nov 9 (Reuters) - This year is ‌on track to be one of the four hottest on record, driven by a powerful El Niño ​and perpetuating ‌a warming streak of more than a decade, a UN report ‌showed on Monday.

• Countries are preparing to meet in Turkey from November 9 to 20 for the next round of climate ‌talks and the World Meteorological Organization "State of the Climate" report provides the latest available data to inform their discussions.

• Between January and September this year, the global average temperature was 1.47 degrees Celsius above ⁠the pre-industrial average and could rise further due to a major ‌El Niño, the report showed.

• ⁠The WMO report, which encompasses nine data sets, showed that each ​of the past 12 years, including 2026, was ranked among the 12 warmest ever recorded since records began in ​around 1850.

• “Every indicator here is telling the same story. ​We're seeing ‌the heat trapped by greenhouse gasses is showing up in the ​ocean, in the atmosphere, in the melting of ice ⁠and the rising of sea levels,” WMO ‌Head of Climate ​Information John Kennedy told reporters in ​Geneva ahead of the conference.

• The EU's Copernicus climate service already said 2026 was all but certain to become the second calendar year after 2024 to exceed the threshold of ‌1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

• The planet is increasingly accumulating heat, the UN report said, ‌with ocean temperatures ​continuing to rise this year from 2025 all-time highs.

• Global mean sea levels have also reached a record this year as glaciers and ice sheets melt and seawater expands as it heats, the ‌report said.

(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Susan Fenton)