2015 was the warmest year on record

“That’s, in NOAA’s record, the largest leap from an existing record to a new record that we’ve had”. This new record means that 15 out of the 16 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001, providing still more evidence that Earth’s climate is changing due to warming temperatures.

“2015 was the warmest year in more than a hundred years, ever since people have been keeping records and actually it beat the old record not by a little bit, but by a lot”, said Professor Timothy Herbert, Chair of the Geological Sciences Department at Brown University in Providence.

In addition, the clear reason behind the increase of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 19th century is mainly “increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere”, NASA said.

Year 2015 broke the record as the warmest year since 1880.

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said 2015 marked the history in the context of the larger, long-term warming trend.

It’s official. 2015 was the planet’s hottest year on historical records dating back to 1880, shattering the previous mark set in 2014 by 0.13 Celsius (0.23 degrees Fahrenheit), scientists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed Wednesday.

The analysis also shows that the 2015 temperatures shattered the previous record set in 2014 by 0.13C. The Northern Hemisphere by itself experienced a 2.59° F rise in land temperatures over the 20 century average.

Last year wasn’t just the Earth’s hottest year on record – it left a century of high-temperature marks in the dust. The last time a global cold month record was set was December 1916 and the coldest year on record was 1911, according to NOAA.

In a statement, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that climate change is a great problem in today’s world and the agency plays an important task on this matter. “It is a key data point that should make policy makers stand up and take notice – now is the time to act on climate”.

2016 is forecasted to be warmer than 2015 as the effects of the El Nino could drive the temperatures upward.

A report from New York Times revealed that hitting the highest all-time temperature has been expected by scientists in 2015, largely because of the onslaught of one of the biggest El Niño droughts in a hundred years.