LIMA - This year may end as the hottest on record, the UN's weather agency has said as it recounted a tale of rising seas, crippling droughts and floods since January.
"The year 2014 is on track to be one of the hottest, if not the hottest, on record," the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported on the sidelines of the UN climate talks in Lima.
Provisional data for 2014 shows that 14 out of the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred in the 21st century, it added.
"There is no standstill in global warming," WMO chief Michel Jarraud said in a press statement.
"What we saw in 2014 is consistent with what we expect from a changing climate. Record-breaking heat combined with torrential rainfall and floods destroyed livelihoods and ruined lives," he said.
"What is particularly unusual and alarming this year are the high temperatures of vast areas of the ocean surface, including in the northern hemisphere."
The global average air temperature over land and sea surface for January to October was about 0.57 degrees Celsius (1.03 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average of 14 C for a reference period from 1961-1990, the WMO said.
It was 0.09 C above the average for the decade 2004-2013.
"If November and December maintain the same tendency, then 2014 will likely be the hottest on record, ahead of 2010, 2005 and 1998," the WMO said.
"This confirms the underlying long-term warming trend."
The interim report for 2014 aims at guiding 195 countries striving for a global climate change pact, due to take effect by 2020.
At the deal's centre is a roster of national pledges to roll back carbon emissions -- invisible, heat-trapping gases released by burning coal, oil and natural gas.
"Our climate is changing and every year, the risks of extreme weather events and impacts on humanity rise," said Christiana Figueres, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) staging December 1-12 talks in Lima to draft the outlines of the pact.
It must be signed in Paris in December 2015, and will seek to meet a UN target to limit warming to 2 C over pre-industrial levels.
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The WMO said the sea surface temperature for the year so far was the highest on record -- about 0.45 C above the 1961-1990 average.
It was particularly high in the tropical Pacific, approaching, but not triggering, the threshold for the destructive El Nino weather phenomenon.
For January to June, ocean heat measured to depths of 700 and 2,000 metres (2,275 and 6,500 feet) were both the highest on record, reflecting the ocean's role in absorbing heat from the warming atmosphere.
Heatwaves, floods, drought
Other highlights from the statement:
On November 20, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said global temperatures in October, as well as for the entire year so far, were the hottest on average since record-keeping began in 1880.
The Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a massive report finished this year, said warming on current emission trends was on track for roughly double the UN target.
AFP