Earth continued to experience a period of significant warming in 2020, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Estimates say that this year will be one of the three hottest, right after 2016 and 2019.
The six warmest years, according to global measurements going back to 1850, have occurred since 2015.
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The warmest was the Siberian Arctic, where temperatures were five degrees Celsius above average.
How do we know the temperature for 2020 when the year hasn't passed yet?
To calculate annual temperature growth for the State of the Climate report, the WMO uses information from five different global data sets.
They then compare modern readings with temperatures measured between 1850 and 1900. That baseline is sometimes called the pre-industrial level.
Based on data available from January to October this year, the WMO says 2020 will be about 1,2 degrees Celsius above the baseline, but with a margin of error of 0,1 degrees Celsius.
According to all five data sets, 2020 is currently the second warmest, behind 2016, but ahead of 2019, based on comparisons with similar periods from previous years.
However, scientists expect November and December temperatures will likely experience enough cooling to push 2020 into third place.
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This is why the La Niña climate phenomenon has developed in the Pacific, and this usually lowers the temperature.
Despite this, SMO is confident that it will remain one of the hottest three in 2020.
"The warmest years on record have usually coincided with a strong El Niño, as was the case in 2016," says Professor Peteri Talas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization.
"We are now experiencing La Niña, which has a cooling effect on global temperatures, but it has not been enough to stop this year's heat."
Do these small temperature differences matter?
These relatively similar global temperatures recorded in the last few years hide significant differences at the local level.
Siberia experienced temperatures around five degrees Celsius above average in 2020, culminating in a reading of 38 degrees Celsius in Verkhoyansk on June 20, which is provisionally the highest known temperature recorded anywhere north of the Arctic Circle.
From January to October was also the warmest period recorded in Europe.
But some places were below average, including parts of Canada, Brazil, India and Australia.
Overall, the 2020 figures support the view that human-induced climate warming is continuing. The decade from 2011 to 2020 was the warmest on record.
If 2020 was so warm, where did all that heat go?
Most of the excess heat from warming gases in the atmosphere ends up in the oceans.
This puts additional pressure on the seas, with about 80 percent of global waters experiencing at least one marine heat wave this year.
These events, similar to heat waves on land, represent prolonged exposure to high temperatures that can have devastating effects on marine life and ecosystems.
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A prolonged heat wave off the coast of California, known as the "bubble", is said to have killed up to a million seabirds in 2015-16.
Researchers say these events have become more than 20 times more frequent in the last 40 years.
"About 90 percent of the accumulated heat in the climate system from anthropogenic climate change ends up in the ocean," says Professor John Church of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
"These latest WMO data clearly show that the oceans are continuing to warm, and at an accelerated rate, contributing to sea level rise. This means that climate change has a significant momentum that will inevitably lead to further changes in the coming decades."
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What other aspects of 2020 reflect the current warming?
The WMO says warming continues to fuel melting in many parts of the world, including Greenland, where about 152 billion tons of ice have been lost from the ice sheet this year through August 2020.
There were 30 named storms during the North Atlantic hurricane season, breaking the record for such events.
As well as the record numbers, new evidence suggests that hurricanes are becoming more powerful as they make landfall due to warmer temperatures.
Among other consequences recorded by the WMO this year are fires in Siberia, Australia and along the American West Coast and South America, whose dense layers of smoke enveloped the planet.
Floods in Africa and Southeast Asia have displaced large numbers of people and threatened the food security of millions.
What is the reaction to this report?
The findings of the WMO report will not surprise most observers.
"The State of the Global Climate? Uncertain," says Professor Dave Ray, from the University of Edinburgh.
“These annual reports on the failing health of the planet always make grim reading; this year there was a full red alert. The spike in heat, increased droughts and wild forest fires speak of the acute consequences of climate change in 2020."
They also warn of the chronic damage of global carbon sequestration - in oceans, trees and soils around the world - that is ongoing.
"Add to that more emissions and warming and they will knock the Paris climate targets out of reach forever." The year ahead will define our recovery from Covid-19, but the centuries ahead will be defined by how green that recovery actually is."
Environmental activists say the report also vindicates calls for the recovery from Covid to focus on climate change and the environment.
"Although the pandemic was the biggest concern for many people in the developed world in 2020, for millions in climate-vulnerable places climate emergency remains the biggest threat, and unfortunately there is no simple vaccine to heal the climate," says Dr Kat Kramer of Christian Aid .
But keeping fossil fuels in the country would be a good start.
"These findings show how important it is to ensure that the government's economic recovery measures do not rely on the fossil fuel economy, but work to accelerate the transition to a net-zero carbon world."
What about the impact of climate change on nature?
According to a new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), climate change is currently the biggest threat to the world's most important cultural heritage sites.
The IUCN says 83 such sites are now threatened by rising temperatures, including the Great Barrier Reef, where ocean warming, acidification and extreme temperatures have contributed to dramatic declines.
He was first assessed as being in "critical condition".
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