The five years from 2011 through 2015 were the hottest on record, and the warming is speeding up trends of rising sea levels and more extreme weather worldwide, according to a new report.
The World Meteorological Organization released its analysis of the current global climate as a United Nations climate change conference opened in Marrakesh, Morocco on Tuesday.
The report says global temperatures over the past five years were an average of 0.57 degrees Celsius higher than temperatures measured during the second half of the last century.
It says 2015 was the hottest single year on record, with 2014 coming in second.
The report says global sea surface temperatures also hit a new peak in 2015, and that Arctic sea ice, the ice sheet on Greenland and northern hemisphere snow cover are all in decline.
One exception to the trend is sea ice around Antarctica, which was above average for much of the five-year period.
The WMO says the warming trend is the result of man-made greenhouse gases, and has made extreme weather events more likely. Examples highlighted in the report include the 2010 to 2012 East African drought, which killed more than 250,000 people, 2015 heat waves in India and Pakistan that killed more than 4,000, and Typhoon Haiyan, which killed 7,800 people in the Philippines in 2013.
