The year 2020 was the hottest year in France since records began in 1900, state weather forecaster said. It said that the average temperature across France in 2020 was 14 degrees Celsius (57.2 degrees Fahrenheit), beating the 13.9C (57 Fahrenheit) recorded in 2018, it wrote on Twitter.
"The cooler weather we are seeing at the end of this year will not change anything. It is official... 2020 was the hottest year ever recorded" in France, it said, reports AFP.
The United Nations earlier said, this year is on course to be one of the three warmest ever recorded and could even top the record set in 2016.
"2020 has, unfortunately, been yet another extraordinary year for our climate," said UN's World Meteorological Organizationsecretary-general PetteriTaalas.
"The average global temperature in 2020 is set to be about 1.2 C above the pre-industrial level," said Taalas.
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -- the main driver of climate change -- hit record highs last year and continued climbing in 2020 despite measures to halt the Covid-19 pandemic.
The annual impact of the coronavirus crisis was expected to be a drop of between 4.2 and 7.5 percent in carbon dioxide emissions.
However, CO2 remains in the atmosphere for centuries, meaning the effect of the pandemic is negligible.
Record warm years usually coincide with a strong El Nino effect in Pacific Ocean surface temperatures, as in 2016.
But this year's opposite La Nina cool phase of the cycle has not been sufficient to keep this year's heat in check -- begging the question of how hot 2020 might have got without it.
The WMO said that more than 80 percent of the ocean area had experienced at least one marine heatwave so far in 2020.
"Sea level has increased throughout the altimeter record, but recently sea level has risen at a higher rate due partly to increased melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica," the report said.
"In the Arctic, the annual minimum sea-ice extent was the second lowest on record and record low sea-ice extents were observed in the months of July and October."
