NEW YORK, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- Global temperatures are the 10th-highest on record despite this year's La Nina, which is supposed to cool Earth's atmosphere, a U.N. report said.
The U.N. World Meteorological Organization report, released Tuesday at the organization's Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, said the 13 warmest years on record since 1850 have all occurred since 1997, with the period between 2002 and 2011 the warmest-ever decade.
WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud, at a press briefing in Geneva, said concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rapidly approaching levels consistent with a rise in average global temperatures that some scientists say could trigger irreversible climate changes, the United Nations said in a release.
The report said this year's weather was heavily influenced by a strong La Nina event that developed in the tropical Pacific at the end of 2010 and continued until May 2011. The La Nina was linked to droughts in East Africa, the central equatorial Pacific and the southern part of the United States. The La Nina was also associated with the floods in Southern Africa, Southern Asia, eastern Australia and Central and South America.
