European researchers on Wednesday said 2019 was the second-hottest year in recorded history, the latest bellwether as activists and scientists urge dramatic action to rein in carbon emissions and the fallout from climate change .

The findings, published by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), a monitoring agency backed by the European Union, underscore a series of bleak reports published in recent months: The world is getting hotter , ice sheets are melting faster, oceans are rising more and animals are dying at a breakneck pace.

2019 has been another exceptionally warm year, in fact the second warmest globally in our dataset, with many of the individual months breaking records, Carlo Buontempo, the head of C3S, said in a statement.

Only 2016 was hotter, but just by a razor-thin margin of 0.04 degree Celsius. The 2010s were also the warmest decade on record, researchers noted.

The results come as another environmental tragedy, a string of severe bushfires in Australia, have cast a sharp lens on the effects of climate change not just decades in the future but right now. The country has been on fire for more than a month, scorching 12 million acres so far. At least 24 people have been killed, more than 2,600 homes have been destroyed and some experts estimate more than a billion animals have perished in the blazes.