EARTH faces catastrophic climate change due to global warming as 2016 is set to be the hottest year on record, scientists have revealed.
Climate boffins from the UN weather agency said this year will be the warmest for more than 200 years – with the world still getting hotter.
From January to September 2016, global temperatures soared 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
If they reach one degree above this, thousands of leading scientists believe dangerous sea level rise and extreme weather events are inevitable.
But despite mounting evidence, the world’s most powerful leader is still convinced climate change is a “hoax”.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to defund climate research and rip up the UN’s global climate deal.
The UN Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global temperatures below two degrees Celsius above pre-industriallevels, has already taken effect.
But the billionaire business tycoon believes that "the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive”.
Meanwhile, The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said it was “very likely” that 2016 will be the hottest year on record.
WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said the heat was turned up by a weather phenomenon known as El Nino and burning fossil fuels.
He said: “The extra heat from the powerful El Nino event has disappeared. The heat from global warming will continue.”
Scorching global temperatures have already caused potentially irreversible damage.
Almost a quarter of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been wiped out and Greenland’s ice caps are melting at a drastic rate.
Around 200 countries – including Britain – are committed to keeping temperatures "well below" 2C above pre-industrial times.
It comes as world leaders meet in Marrakech, Morocco, to discuss ways to honour the Paris climate deal.
But Earth could already be heading towards a “game over” climate scenario.
Experts who wrote a paper in the Science Advances journal predicted temperatures could shoot as high as 7C by 2100.
Professor Michael Mann, of Penn State University in the US, said the paper’s findings support the “notion that a Donald Trump presidency could be game over for the climate”.
“By ‘game over for the climate’, I mean game over for stabilising warming below dangerous (i.e. greater than 2C) levels," he said.
“If Trump makes good on his promises, and the US pulls out of the Paris [climate] treaty, it is difficult to see a path forward to keeping warming below those levels.”
It comes after scientists said many of Britain's favourite holiday hotspots could be off limits in 84 years – due to drastic climate change.
dailystar.co.uk
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