2015 was the hottest year ever recorded

Not only were the year’s temperatures the highest ever recorded, but the annual average also surpassed the previous temperature high by the largest margin, NOAA said.

This marks “the fourth time a global temperature record has been set this century”, the report said.

With the large spike this year, NASA said it could call 2015 the hottest year on record with 94 percent certainty – that’s double the certainty they had the previous year when 2014 was announced as a record.

Most of this increase has occurred since 1981, and 15 of the 16 hottest years on record have happened since the turn of the century.

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Director Gavin Schmidt expressed that El Niño had a significant effect over 2015’s warm temperature, yet the increasing trend and the record-breaking heat were products of a long-term cumulative effect.

NASA’s data is sourced from 6,300 weather stations located all over the world, in addition to a number of ship- and buoy-based systems measuring sea temperatures, and research centres stationed in the Antarctic.

Record warmth was broadly spread around the world, NOAA reported, with portions of central and South America, Europe, and central Asia seeing some of the warmest temperatures.

This news is especially timely in that it comes right after the 2015 Paris climate talks, where representatives from 195 countries agreed to address climate change by curbing carbon emissions.

Ten months had record high temperatures for their respective months during the year.

“Climate change is the challenge of our generation, and NASA’s vital work on this important issue affects every person on Earth”, said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. The trend couldn’t be clearer: The planet is warming, and it’s happening now. Scientists say the biggest culprits are global warming and a massive El Nino, which has joined 1997-1998 as the strongest El Nino ever observed.

Blistering heat blanketed the Earth last year like never before, making 2015 by far the hottest year in modern times and raising new concerns about the accelerating pace of climate change. “Now we don’t expect it to last, but it will add to the global warming picture”, said Herbert.

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