2015 the hottest year in history

According to independent analyses from NASA and NOAA, 2015 was officially the hottest year since modern record keeping began in 1880.

The average temperature across global land and ocean services was 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20 century average, and 0.29 degrees above 2014, which was the previous warmest year.

FILE – In this August 15, 2015 file photo, pedestrians walk past a digital thermometer reading 113 degrees Fahrenheit in the Canoga Park section of Los Angeles.

“Ten months had record high temperatures for their respective months during the year”, the report on the global averages stated.

While an unusually strong El Niño weather pattern provided a modest boost to global temperatures, global climate change is considered a larger driver of the warming. The two agencies say that there’s a 94% certainty that 2015 is the hottest year on record.

In the U.S., some Republican lawmakers and those skeptical of human-caused climate change have pointed to a slowdown in temperature rise after the powerful El Nino in 1998 as a sign that climate change is not a serious problem. “What we are expecting in the next century is to be 8 to 9 degrees warmer than today and that too will be a different planet”.

The back-to-back record temperatures set in 2014 and 2015 provide further evidence (in case it’s needed) that the world is in a state of global warming. Satellite measurements, which scientists say don’t measure where we live and have a larger margin of error, calculate that a year ago was only the third hottest since 1979.

Earth’s had it hottest year on record in 2015.

NOAA’s announcement came against the backdrop of the recently completed Paris climate talks, at which the goal of capping global warming at 2 deg C above pre-industrial levels was enshrined. The five highest monthly departures from average for any month on record all occurred during 2015.

Land and sea temperatures were above average in most parts of the world in 2015, as seen in this graphic from NOAA. El Nino “pushed it [records] way over the top”, director of NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Tom Karl said.

The new record was expected by scientists and perhaps some Western North Carolina residents who found temperatures in late December warm enough to allow going outdoors in just a T-shirt and shorts.