This report is the background document providing the basis for the Cooling Emissions and Policy Synthesis Report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) that is being published simultaneously.

The WMO provisional statement on the State of the Global Climate, says that the global average temperature in 2019 (January to October) was about 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record level of 407.8 parts per million in 2018 and continued to rise in 2019.

The WMO provisional statement on the State of the Global Climate, says that the global average temperature in 2019 (January to October) was about 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record level of 407.8 parts per million in 2018 and continued to rise in 2019.

The tell-tale signs and impacts of climate change – such as sea level rise, ice loss and extreme weather – increased during 2015-2019, which is set to be the warmest five-year period on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

For weather and climate information to be used at the grassroots level, it needs to be effectively interpreted and communicated so that it is both useful and usable to decision-makers, farmers and local-level planners. However, to date this information has not always met these requirements.

The gases heating the planet in 2018 were higher than humans have ever recorded, according to an authoritative new report from the American Meteorological Society and the US government. Greenhouse gas levels topped 60 years of modern measurements and 800,000 years of ice core data, the study found.

This report provides a summary of the UK weather and climate through the calendar year 2018, alongside the historical context for a number of essential climate variables. This is the fifth in a series of annual “State of the UK climate” publications and an update to the 2017 report.

Climate over India during 2018 was significantly warm in respect of temperature. The annual mean temperature for the country this year was +0.40°C above the 1981-2010 average, thus making the year 2018 as the sixth warmest year on records since the nation-wide records commenced in 1901.

2018 was one of the three warmest years on record for Europe. It began with a relatively cold period across most of the region.

This publication marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate, which was first issued in 1994. The 2019 edition treating data for 2018 marks sustained international efforts dedicated to reporting on, analysing and understanding the year-to-year variations and long-term trends of a changing climate.