Pandemic may pull 32M back into extreme poverty, U.N. economists warn

In 2019, average earnings per capita in LDCs was $1,088 compared with a world average of $11,371, the U.N. agency said

A family farmer is shown in Chad, Africa, one of the least developed countries extremely vulnerable to the economic shock caused by COVID-19. 

File Photo by Asselin/UNICEF

Dec. 3 (UPI) -- The COVID-19 pandemic's impact may pull 32 million people back into extreme poverty, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development warned Thursday in a new report.

The economic fallout from the pandemic has risked reversing years of "painstaking progress" addressing poverty in the the least developed countries, UNCTAD warned in a statement on the report.

"The COVID crisis is leading LDCs to their worst economic crisis in 30 years, with per capita GDP for the group expected to fall by 2.6% this year," UNCTAD Secretary General Mukhisa Kituyi said during a virtual press conference.

In the LDCs, the pandemic is expected to lead to an increase in poverty of 3 percentage points, from 32.2% to 35.2%, equating to an increase of 32 million people living in extreme poverty.

The UNCTAD report, which defines extreme poverty line as $1.90 per day, found that the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a bleak economic growth outlook worldwide, but the outlook is even worse for LDCs, especially African and island LDCs.

The LDCs have been hit the hardest because they are "among the world's most vulnerable economies," and they have the least financial and infrastructure means to react to economic shocks such as the the economic fallout from the pandemic, according to the report.

In 2019, average earnings per capita in LDCs was $1,088 compared with a world average of $11,371, the U.N. agency said.

Kituyi urged the international community to help the LDCs overcome their vulnerabilities and improve their manufacturing capacity to avert the potential economic crisis.

"The LDCs that have been most active and innovative in combating the pandemic have been those with the most productive capacity or institutional capacity," Kituyi said. "Countries like Senegal, which produced cheap and rapid COVID testing kits, Bangladesh and others like Ethiopia, repurposing garment factories to produce PPEs (personal protective equipment)."

#CLIMATECHANGE
6 missing after landslides swipe Alaskan town

IT'S RAINING, IT'S DECEMBER, 

IT'S ALASKA,IT'S GLOBAL WARMING 

The U.S. Coast Guard has launched rescue operations to Haines, Alaska, following landslides caused by heavy rain. Image courtesy of Google Maps/Website

Dec. 3 (UPI) -- At least six people were missing after several landslides caused by heavy rains and flooding smashed into the Alaskan town of Haines, authorities said.

One of the landslides has resulted in six people missing and four houses destroyed off of Beach Road, but Alaska State Troopers said Wednesday evening that they have suspended search and rescue operations due unstable ground, KTUU-TV reported.

The Haines Borough Police Department has issued several evacuation orders as flooding and landslides washed out several roads and flooded homes on Wednesday. Officials warned residents to stay clear of land close to water as "the surface is very unstable and likely to fail."

"Please stay away from damaged roads and broken pavement," the Haines borough government said on Facebook.

The U.S. Coast Guard said a Jayhawk helicopter crew has been launched to assist two Coast Guard cutters, which have been ordered to make preparations to set sail for Haines, a city some 92 miles north of Juneau.

"At this point we are aware that damage has occurred in the town of Haines following the report of multiple landslides in the borough," Capt. Stephen White, commander Coast Guard Sector Juneau, said in a statement. "The scope of the damage is unknown at this time but we are proactively moving several assets and personnel to provide assistance to local first responders and the residents who may have been impacted by the landslides."

The landslides occurred as the area was inundated with rain.

The National Weather Service has issued a Flash Flood Watch until Thursday morning as between 7 to 10 inches of rain has been recorded in Haines in the last 36 to 48 hours.

"Saturated grounds from recent rains have caused debris flows blocking off major roadways. Additional debris flows and flooding are possible through Thursday morning near steep terrain," the NWS warned Wednesday night.

Alaskan Gov. Mike Dunleavy said he has spoken with Douglas Olerud, the mayor of Haines, and said all state resources will be made available.

"That natural disaster unfolding in Haines and the broader southeast area has the full and complete attention of my administration," the governor said in a statement Wednesday evening. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haines tonight."

Olerud said crews would be working through the night but the rain was making it difficult.

He wrote in a statement that the town "is going to be needing lots of prayers."

"Please be patient with each other," he said. "These are stressful times but Haines will come together and help each other."

Robots help seniors learn to use technology in South Korea
By Thomas Maresca

A robot teaches a senior citizen how to use KakaoTalk, a ubiquitous communications app in South Korea. Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI


SEOUL, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- In South Korea, one of the most digitally connected societies in the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the growth of contactless technology in everyday life. But one group is finding itself struggling in a fast-changing world of communications apps, fast food-ordering kiosks and robot waiters: senior citizens.

The Seoul city government is trying to help bridge the digital divide with a new program that uses specially designed robots to teach seniors how to use smartphones and touchscreen kiosks. The program, which will teach 3,000 participants over the next three months at 17 facilities, launched last week.

"Our goal is closing the digital gap between young people and seniors," said Shin Eun-kyong, business outreach manager of the Seoul Digital Foundation, the city agency that is running the program in conjunction with five local district governments.

"There are many mobile devices, kiosks and digital devices these days," she said. "But some seniors cannot use these devices by themselves. So we think this makes them feel isolated from society."

At West Seoul Senior Welfare Center on Tuesday, a group of 10 seniors had their first experiences with a small robot named Liku, which used voice instructions, gestures and a specially modified smartphone to teach them how to use KakaoTalk, a ubiquitous messaging app used in South Korea.

Liku is connected to a central server and can answer roughly 200 conversational questions and provide information such as the current weather. The small black-and-white humanoid robot has expressive digital eyes and is designed to interact via facial recognition and voice responses.

The city has worked for over a year with a local startup company called Torooc, which is developing Liku as a companion robot for home use, for the custom teaching application.

"We want the robots to be friendly," Shin said. "We also think they have some advantages over teaching with humans face to face. It can be tiring to go over the same things over and over, but a robot can repeat the instructions until the seniors understand."

For the first group of senior citizens to use the robots, it was a new experience but one they found largely positive.

"I've only ever used a robot vacuum before," said Han Ok-dong, 73. "But this robot started teaching me step by step in a way that I can understand and that will stay in my head. I want to work with it more in the future and keep advancing."

Han said she's faced frustrations using smartphones and kiosks in her everyday life, as have other senior citizens at the center.

"I'm getting older, so its unavoidable that using [new technology] is getting more difficult for me," said another 73-year-old, Yoon Kwang-soon.

Yoon said that it took a while to warm up to using the Liku robot, but that he hopes it will help him to also learn more advanced features on KakaoTalk, such as sharing photos.

"I wasn't used to working with a robot so it felt unfamiliar to me at first," he said. "But if I have time I want to come here and use it again."

A test program that was run for around 100 seniors in August found that 87% of participants were satisfied and that 83% wanted to continue in the program, according to the Seoul city government.

Also on display at the West Seoul center was a custom touchscreen kiosk that offers walk-throughs for a variety of real-world scenarios, such as ordering food or buying a movie ticket. Seniors were able to practice with a tablet app before using the kiosk to complete a transaction from start to finish.

Only two of the practice kiosk machines currently exist, but a wider rollout is planned for next year, said Shin of the Seoul Digital Foundation.

The digital training has become especially timely as South Korea is looking to make contactless -- or "untact," in local parlance -- technologies a key part of President Moon Jae-in's $62 billion Digital New Deal stimulus program.

The program is looking to position South Korea as a leader in addressing the surging demand for remote services driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. Projects include building smart hospitals for telemedicine and supporting small- and medium-size business with virtual conferencing. Investments will target untact technologies such as robots, drones, AI and 5G wireless networks.

Shin said that the city will expand the use of the Liku robots into new areas over the coming months, such as helping to educate seniors on avoiding phishing scams. They will also bring the robots to young children next year, with plans to utilize them for teaching subjects such as English.

"The pandemic is changing society, and it is more important than ever to find non face-to-face ways to teach and to help everyone adapt to the untact world," Shin said

South Korean convenience store chain to offer robot delivery
By Nam Gyeong-sik, UPI News Korea

A sales clerk loads a delivery robot with products at a convenience store in Seoul. 

Photo courtesy of GS Retail

SEOUL, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- A South Korean convenience store chain has announced plans to launch a robot delivery service, as the COVID-19 pandemic pushes the service industry to go contactless.

GS Retail, which runs the ubiquitous GS25 convenience store brand, announced Monday the robot service would be rolled out at its outlet in western Seoul.

"So many South Korean conglomerates and startups are working on the technologies related to delivery robots," said Choi Sung-lok of the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute. "Technical development and social change will bring about more delivery robots."

Customers will make orders through an instant messenger, triggering a store clerk to place products on the robot while inputting the destination and the customer's mobile phone number.

Then the 4.3-foot-tall robot will carry the items to the customer, who can unlock a drawer on the robot's body by typing a PIN after getting a message that their goods have arrived. The robot can even get on and off elevators, the company said.

The bot can carry a maximum of 33 pounds and has a security system that prevents loss or robbery during delivery.

GS Retail official Park Sang-wook said that the firm will install the robots in its other stores in Seoul next year.

"We will put forth great efforts to realize fanciful services like the delivery robots as part of our digital transformation strategy," he said.

Builder Samsung C&T, discount chain E-Mart, delivery app company Baedal Minjok, and Howard Johnson Jeju Hotel have also shown off robotic services.

Oil refiner GS Caltex is even considering drone delivery services for its gas stations after getting the government approval. The outfit showcased test flights from its drones earlier this year.

Obama compares his younger self to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and says she should've been given more time to speak at the Democratic convention
Eliza Relman
  

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Monday, August 24, 2020. 

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images/Pool

Former President Barack Obama said in a Monday night interview that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should have gotten more time to speak at the Democratic Convention in August. 

Obama said the freshman congresswoman "speaks to a broad section of young people" and argued that "new blood is always good," pointing out that he was once the "young, shiny cool guy." 

Ocasio-Cortez was given just 60 seconds to speak at the convention, where she delivered a symbolic endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid.



Former President Barack Obama said in a Monday night interview that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the high-profile progressive freshman, should have gotten more time to speak at the Democratic Convention in August.

"The Democratic National Convention I thought was really successful considering the pandemic," Obama told Peter Hamby, host of Snap's "Good Luck America." "But the fact that an AOC only got, what? Three minutes or five minutes? When she speaks to a broad section of young people who are interested in what she has to say, even if they don't agree with everything she says."

He added, "New blood is always good. And I say that as somebody who used to be the young, shiny cool guy. But now is the gray-haired old grizzled vet."

Ocasio-Cortez was given just 60 seconds to speak at the convention, where she delivered a symbolic endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid.

Over the summer, the Bronx native worked with Biden's campaign and Sanders on a coalition task force to beef up President-elect Joe Biden's policies proposals to address climate change. But Ocasio-Cortez hasn't shied away from criticizing the president-elect when she diverges from him on policy and personnel decisions, and she has repeatedly called on progressive activists to hold the Biden administration "accountable."

Obama cautioned Democrats against what he considers to be divisive "labels," like the activist calls to defund the police and Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders' democratic socialism.

"Socialism is still a loaded term for a lot of folks," he said. "Once again, instead of talking labels and ideology, we should focus on talking about getting certain things done."

Ocasio-Cortez raises $200K on Twitch for those affected by pandemic

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., shown standing in front of her a campaign truck in New York on June 23, raised $200,000 on Twitch for those affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 30 (UPI) -- The gaming skills of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped net low-income U.S. residents $200,000 for coronavirus-related issues on Friday.

Playing the popular video game Among Us on Twitch with Jagmeet Singh, head of Canada's new Democratic Party, Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., participated in the five-hour streaming session.

"We did it! $200k raised in one Livestream (on a whim!) for eviction defense, food pantries, and more," she said on Twitter. "This is going to make such a difference for those who need it most right now." Singh congratulated the congresswoman for her participation and the successful fundraising effort.

"It was awesome chatting with you about how we can build a better world," Singh said on Twitter. "In Canada, things aren't perfect and we face many of the same challenges. But together we can do better. My mom always taught me: When we lift each other up, we all rise."

It is not the first time Ocasio-Cortez has made the novel use of gaming to reach new audiences. Last month, she played Among Us with Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., for a get-out-the-vote effort targeted at young people before the election. It was one of the most-watched live streams in the history of Twitch.

Even Sen. Bernie Sanders, 79, started his own Twitch channel last June, becoming the first presidential candidate to use a video game streaming service as part of his campaign to compete for the youth vote.

'Lifeline' aid to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon running out


A Palestinian girl with a national flag on her head attends a protest against the so-called "deal of the century" from U.S. President Donald Trump to solve the conflict between Palestinians and Israel, in Bourj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, on January 31. File Photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA-EFE

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are at risk of losing their only source of survival as the United Nations agency that has been supporting them since its creation in 1949 is running out of cash.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees' financial crisis, compounded by Lebanon's deteriorating economic conditions and an alarming spread of COVID-19, has pushed the estimated 200,000 refugees deeper into poverty. With 45% of them living in some 12 crowded shanty towns across the country, the refugees depend entirely on UNRWA for education, healthcare, social services and humanitarian assistance.

"The conditions are really difficult. If we ran out of money and we cannot support the poor among the Palestinians, whose numbers are increasing, then they are left on their own," Claudio Cordone, UNRWA director in Lebanon, told UPI. "There is nobody else for them. UNRWA literally is the only lifeline."

Cash-strapped Lebanon, which is grappling with its worst financial and economic crisis since its 1975-90 civil war, can barely feed its own population and doesn't have the capacity to help any of the refugees on its soil. Besides the Palestinian refugees, Lebanon also hosts more than 1 million Syrians who fled the war in their country.

RELATED U.N. head names new UNRWA deputy after scathing ethics report

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini sounded the alarm earlier this month, warning that a huge deficit in the agency's budget could force it to stop some of its services and the payment of salaries to 28,000 staffers in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Jordan.

The agency, which supports 5.5 million Palestinian refugees, has been experiencing its worst financial crisis since it lost all funding from its major donor, the United States. In 2018, President Donald Trump suspended the United States' $360 million annual contribution to UNRWA as part of his efforts to force the Palestinians to resume peace talks with Israel and accept his "deal of the century."

In Lebanon, the Palestinians are suffering the most, with poverty and unemployment soaring since Oct. 17, 2019, when thousands of Lebanese took to the streets to demand the ouster of corrupt political leaders and protest the country's deteriorating conditions. With the national currency losing 80 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar, inflation reaching record levels, food commodities prices almost quadrupled and coronavirus cases on the rise, it has become hard for the refugees to survive.

"The situation is catastrophic," Mahmoud Fares, a 40-year-old taxi driver from the refugee camp of Rashidiyeh in southern Lebanon, told UPI. "Everything in the camp is pointing to death -- no jobs, no money, and we are facing one crisis after the other...If it wasn't for the salaries that some young men are getting from the Palestinian factions, people would have died of hunger."

The worst for Samira Sabri, a 75-year-old Palestinian woman, was to see children in the camp suffering from malnutrition as "their parents cannot afford to buy enough food and of course no meat or chicken."

Samir al Hajj is using dynamite to catch fish to feed his children. "We cannot survive with what UNRWA is able to give us now...We are stuck," Al Hajj, 50, told UPI.



Cordone sees signs of possible violence, people committing suicide, more attempts at irregular migration, young people lured by extremist groups and eventually social unrest and instability that could engulf all of Lebanon.

"You can imagine young people without a job and without prospects...some groups would give them a gun and some money to carry out acts of violence," he said. "Every time I meet someone in the camp, he would tell me that what he really wants is to leave as they are not able to have a future in this country."

Abdelnasser el Ayi, office director of the Lebanese-Palestinian Dialogue Committee, said despair, poverty and anger are prompting the refugees to risk everything to settle in Europe, Canada or the United States.

"They have nothing to lose as they feel unwelcome in the country...But last year, some became victims of human trafficking and mafias facilitating illegal immigration," el Ayi told UPI. "Many are still stuck in countries like Indonesia or Cuba and unable to reach countries of destination, having been abandoned by the traffickers."

Despite the worsening living conditions, Islamic extremist groups may not be an attractive option for the impoverished refugees, at least for the time being, according to a number of Palestinian security officials contacted by UPI.

Those groups, who were active in the refugee camp of Ein el-Helweh on the outskirts of the southern port city of Sidon, were contained and isolated by the Palestinian factions running the shanty town with the cooperation of the Lebanese security forces three years ago.

"The security situation in the camps is much better than before, but poverty could push you to do everything," Mohamad Bikai, Fatah spokesman in the southern Tyre region, told UPI. "The real fear is hunger and terrorist groups with their sleeping cells could exploit the misery in the camps."

However, the ability of the Palestine Liberation Organization to pay half salary in U.S. dollars for its officers and administrators in Lebanon, along with money transferred from Palestinians living abroad to their families and occasional donations by wealthy Palestinian businessmen and European NGOs, have helped alleviate the suffering of the refugees.

"This helps and can prevent social explosion but it cannot replace UNRWA," Bikai said. "Reducing UNRWA's funding and services is essentially a political issue. It is meant to break the will of the Palestinians so they accept Trump's 'deal of the century.'"

UNRWA is planning a conference in March to appeal to all donor countries to make significant contributions to help it out of its crisis. Meanwhile, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has said he would resume humanitarian payments for the Palestinians.

"Palestinian refugees are not going to disappear tomorrow even if UNRWA disappears. They exist and need to be supported," Cordone said.

Louisville, Ky., mayor declares racism a public health crisis

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer on Tuesday declared racism a public health crisis in the city, citing the police killing of Breonna Taylor, impacts of COVID-19 and longstanding systemic issues such as economic inequality. File Photo by Kyle Grillot/EPA-EFE

Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Louisville, Ky., Mayor Greg Fischer signed an executive order Tuesday declaring racism a public health crisis.

In remarks on Tuesday, Fischer declared 2020 has been a year like no other" citing challenges facing the city such as COVID-19, economic downturn, increase in gun violence and protests calling for racial justice some sparked by the police killing of Breonna Taylor, which he said made the city "a focal point for America's reckoning on racial justice."

"For too many Lousivillians, racism is a fact of daily life, a fact that was created and documented in our country's laws and institutional policies like segregation, redlining and urban renewal," he said.

The executive order outlines seven key areas for the city's government to address racial equity challenges including public safety, children and families, Black employment, Black wealth, housing and neighborhood investment, health, and voting.

"These reforms will require a strong commitment and a lot of work," Fischer said. "But I believe it can be done -- in part because when I look around Lousiville and talk to people from every neighborhood and background, I sense a greater and broader understanding and desire to address racial equity than ever before."

More than 145 cities and counties throughout the United States have previously declared racism a public health issue, according to the American Public Health Association.

Multiple public health studies cited in a June article by Pew Research Center detailed the health effects of racism, including data showing that Black women are four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than White women, Black men are twice as likely to be killed by police as White men and the average life expectancy for Black people in the United States is four years lower than the rest of the national population.

Fischer noted that in Louisville the Black poverty rate is nearly three times the White poverty rate, Black residents make up 22.4% of the population but own 2.4% of businesses, half as many Black residents own homes as White residents, Black graduates earn nearly $10,000 less than White graduates and life expectancy can vary by as much as 12 years between majority-Black and majority-White neighborhoods.

"All of these and a million other statistics and real-life experiences tell us that our systems are more than broken -- they must be dismantled and replaced," he said.

What will the climate be like when earth's next supercontinent forms?

In roughly 200 million years, the continents will once again unite into a supercontinent; a new study explores how the next Pangea could affect the global climate

EARTH INSTITUTE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: HOW LAND COULD BE DISTRIBUTED IN THE AURICA SUPERCONTINENT (TOP) VERSUS AMASIA. THE FUTURE LAND CONFIGURATIONS ARE SHOWN IN GRAY, WITH MODERN-DAY OUTLINES OF THE CONTINENTS FOR COMPARISON. view more 

CREDIT: WAY ET AL. 2020

Long ago, all the continents were crammed together into one large land mass called Pangea. Pangea broke apart about 200 million years ago, its pieces drifting away on the tectonic plates -- but not permanently. The continents will reunite again in the deep future. And a new study, presented today during an online poster session at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union, suggests that the future arrangement of this supercontinent could dramatically impact the habitability and climate stability of Earth. The findings also have implications for searching for life on other planets.

The study, which has been submitted for publication, is the first to model the climate on a supercontinent in the deep future.

Scientists aren't exactly sure what the next supercontinent will look like or where it will be located. One possibility is that, 200 million years from now, all the continents except Antarctica could join together around the north pole, forming the supercontinent "Amasia." Another possibility is that "Aurica" could form from all the continents coming together around the equator in about 250 million years.

In the new study, researchers used a 3D global climate model to simulate how these two land mass arrangements would affect the global climate system. The research was led by Michael Way, a physicist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, an affiliate of Columbia University's Earth Institute.

The team found that, by changing atmospheric and ocean circulation, Amasia and Aurica would have profoundly different effects on the climate. The planet could end up being 3 degrees Celsius warmer if the continents all converge around the equator in the Aurica scenario.

In the Amasia scenario, with the land amassed around both poles, the lack of land in between disrupts the ocean conveyor belt that currently carries heat from the equator to the poles. As a result, the poles would be colder and covered in ice all year long. And all of that ice would reflect heat out into space.

With Amasia, "you get a lot more snowfall," explained Way. "You get ice sheets, and you get this very effective ice-albedo feedback, which tends to lower the temperature of the planet."

CAPTION

Distribution of snow and ice in winter and summer on Aurica (left) and Amasia.

In addition to cooler temperatures, Way suggested that sea level would probably be lower in the Amasia scenario, with more water tied up in the ice caps, and that the snowy conditions could mean that there wouldn't be much land available for growing crops.

Aurica, by contrast, would probably be a bit beachier, he said. The land concentrated closer to the equator would absorb the stronger sunlight there, and there would be no polar ice caps to reflect heat out of Earth's atmosphere -- hence the higher global temperature.

Although Way likens Aurica's shores to the paradisiacal beaches of Brazil, "the inland would probably be quite dry," he warned. Whether or not much of the land would be farmable would depend on the distribution of lakes and what types of precipitation patterns it experiences -- details that the current paper doesn't delve into, but could be investigated in the future.

The simulations showed that temperatures were right for liquid water to exist on about 60% of Amasia's land, as opposed to 99.8% of Aurica's -- a finding that could inform the search for life on other planets. One of the main factors that astronomers look for when scoping out potentially habitable worlds is whether or not liquid water could survive on the planet's surface. When modeling these other worlds, they tend to simulate planets that are either completely covered in oceans, or else whose terrain looks like that of modern-day Earth. The new study, however, shows that it's important to consider land mass arrangements while estimating whether temperatures fall in the 'habitable' zone between freezing and boiling.

Although it may be 10 or more years before scientists can ascertain the actual land and sea distribution on planets in other star systems, the researchers hope that having a larger library of land and sea arrangements for climate modeling could prove useful in estimating the potential habitability of neighboring worlds.

###

Hannah Davies and Joao Duarte from the University of Lisbon, and Mattias Green from Bangor University in Wales were co-authors on this research.

2020 likely world's second hottest year, U.N. says

By Emma Farge

GENEVA (Reuters) - This year is on track to be the second hottest on record, behind 2016, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday.

Five data sets currently place 2020, a year characterised by heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and raging hurricanes, as the second warmest since records began in 1850.

"2020 is very likely to be one of the three warmest years on record globally," the Geneva-based U.N. agency said in its State of the Global Climate in 2020 report. (Report: bit.ly/2KPSVTJ)

Stoked by extreme heat, wildfires flared across Australia, Siberia and the United States this year, sending smoke plumes around the globe.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a speech at Columbia University in New York that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are to blame and policies have yet to rise to the challenge.

“To put it simply the state of the planet is broken,” Guterres said. “Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal,” he said.

A less visible sign of change was a surge in marine heat to record levels, with more than 80% of the global ocean experiencing a marine heatwave, the WMO said.

“2020 has, unfortunately, been yet another extraordinary year for our climate,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas, urging more efforts to curb the emissions.

Greenhouse gas concentrations climbed to a new record in 2019 and have risen so far this year despite an expected drop in emissions due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the WMO said last month.

The latest WMO report said the global mean temperature was around 1.2 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 baseline between January and October this year, placing it second behind 2016 and marginally ahead of 2019.

Hot years have typically been associated with El Niño, a natural event that releases heat from the Pacific Ocean. However, this year coincides with La Niña which has the opposite effect and cools temperatures.

The WMO will confirm the data in March 2021.

A climate pact agreed in Paris five years ago compels countries to make efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, above which scientists warn of catastrophic climate change.

While it is not the same as crossing that long-term warming threshold, the WMO says there is at least a one in five chance of temperatures temporarily, on an annual basis, exceeding that level by 2024.

Guterres said that last year natural disasters related to climate change cost the world $150 billion, and that air and water pollution are killing 9 million people annually. He urged world leaders to align global finance behind the Paris pact, to commit to reaching net zero emissions, and to fund efforts to adapt to climate change