AFP, Paris

Temperatures soared 10 degrees Celsius above average last month in Siberia, home to much of Earth’s permafrost, as the world experienced its hottest May on record, the European Union’s climate monitoring network said yesterday.

It said May 2020 was 0.68C warmer than the average May from 1981 to 2010.

This has accelerated melting of Greenland’s kilometres-thick ice sheet, resulting in a net loss of 600 billion tonnes of ice mass for the year -- accounting for about 40 percent of total sea level rise in 2019.