2015 was Earth’s hottest year in more than a century: Scientists

2015 marked the 19th straight year that average temperatures in the United States surpassed the average temperatures for the 20th century.

Last year’s global average temperature over land and sea surfaces is scheduled to be revealed at 11:00 am (1600 GMT), in a conference call between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the USA space agency NASA and reporters. It is among the strongest ever recorded but Schmidt and others say the weather phenomenon played just a supporting role in the earth’s temperature rise.

USA government scientists are widely expected to announce Wednesday that 2015 was the planet’s hottest year in modern times, amid mounting concerns over the pace of climate change worldwide.

NOAA said 2015’s temperature was 58.62 degrees Fahrenheit (14.79 degrees Celsius), passing 2014 by a record margin of 0.29 degrees.

“For the first time in recorded history, the Earth’s temperature is clearly more than 1.0 C (1.8 F) above the 1850-1900 average”. In addition, the 10 warmest years since temperature recording started in 1880 have occurred in the 21 century. The five highest monthly departures from average for any month on record all occurred during 2015.

“It’s getting to the point where breaking record is the norm”, Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said.

It’s not rare for a year to break record temperatures. “Last year’s temperatures had an assist from El Niño, but it is the cumulative effect of the long-term trend that has resulted in the record warming that we are seeing”.

NOAA’s announcement on Wednesday also comes against a backdrop of the recently completed Paris climate talks, at which the goal of capping global warming at 2 C above preindustrial levels was enshrined.

And it’s likely to happen this year, too.

For the second year running, temperatures across the globe were the warmest since records were first kept in 1880.

“2015 will be hard to beat, but you say that nearly every year and you get surprised”, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at the College of DuPage outside of Chicago. But with the record in now for 2015, 1988 is not even in the top 20 of warmest years. Satellite measurements, which scientists say don’t measure where we live and have a larger margin of error, calculate that previous year was only the third hottest since 1979.