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Hot, Wet, and Deadly: The First Decade of the 21st Century in Review

The head of the World Meteorological Organization calls it all "unprecedented."
Photo: EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection/Flickr

If you follow climate change news, it should come as little surprise that the World Meteorological Organization has announced that the first decade of the 21st century was the hottest on record, since the modern instrumental record began in the mid-1800s.

The WMO's new report, The Global Climate 2001-2010: a decade of extreme climate, lays out the hot, wet, and deadly details.

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Combined land and ocean surface temperatures since the late 19th century. Image: WMO

Here are the key stats from the WMO's analysis:

  • Each year from 2001-2010, with the exception of 2008, was one of the top-10 hottest years on record. The average land and ocean surface temperature from 2001-2010 was 0.47°C above the global average from 1961-1990, and 0.21°C above the 1991-2000 average.
     
  • 2010 was the single-wettest year on record, capping off the second-wettest decade of the past 100 years. The eastern United States, northern and eastern Canada, Europe, and Central Asia bore the brunt of this abnormal precipitation, with multiple extreme floods.
     
  • Cyclone activity was also abnormal during this period, with the North Atlantic basin witnessing the most active decade since 1855. The region experienced an average of 15 named storms each year, up from a long-term annual average of 12. From 2001 to 2010, nearly 170,000 people worldwide were killed by tropical storms, which affected 250 million people and left damages totaling $380 billion. 
     
  • Extreme drought accompanied increased precipitation. Australia experienced long-term, devastating droughts over multiple years, as did East Africa, and the Amazon Basin. Though it is not mentioned in the report, the record breaking drought that has affected much of the Midwestern United States in recent years is also noteworthy.
     
  • Between 2001 and 2010, 370,000 people died due to extreme weather, a 20 percent increase from the previous decade. The jump has been attributed to a huge increase in heat wave-related deaths, as the number of storm and flood-related deaths markedly declined (-16% for storms and -43% for floods, a trend the report chalks up to better preparedness).​

"A decade is the minimum possible timeframe for meaningful assessments of climate change," said WMO Secretary General Michel Jarraud. "On an annual basis, the global temperature curve is not a smooth one. On a long-term basis the underlying trend is clearly in an upward direction, more so in recent years."

So while temperatures have fluctuated year-to-year, the overall trend is clear: the planet is getting hotter, and it's producing more intense—and more destructive—weather.