Was the Hottest Recorded Year on Earth

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA have announced that 2015 was the hottest year, by far, since record keeping began in 1880.

NOAA said 2015’s temperature was 58.62 degrees Fahrenheit, or 14.79 degrees Celsius, passing 2014 by 0.29 degrees and 1.62 degrees above the 20th-century average.

While a warming El Nino trend likely played a role in 2015 setting the new record, Schmidt says, “it is the cumulative effect of the long-term trend that has resulted in the record warming that we are seeing”.

The El Nino weather pattern is a natural cycle of warming in the Pacific Ocean that heats up the ocean surface in the region every two to seven years and has a wide-ranging impact on global temperatures.

“I think one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever heard in politics… was Obama’s statement that our No. 1 problem is global warming”, GOP front-runner Donald Trump said previous year. Temperatures in 2015 broke all previous records made in 2014, a report added, and by the largest margins ever. Orange colors represent temperatures that are warmer than the 1951-80 baseline average, and blues represent temperatures cooler than the baseline.

Is beating the record for earth’s warmest year a good thing?

Since the El Nino will continue into this spring, he predicted that 2016 would be again “an exceptionally warm year and perhaps even another record”.

Minnesota State Climatologist Greg Spoden said 2015 was the state’s 7th warmest since accurate records have been kept, starting in 1895. Asia and South America experienced their warmest years since 1910 when those records began. This is what global warming looks like. By contrast, more than a century has passed since the globe had a record cold year (1911).

“Is there any evidence for a pause in the long-term global warming rate?” said Dr Gavin A Schmidt, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) climate-science unit, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in Manhattan. Records keep getting broken, the warmest years on record keep clustering in the recent past (15 of the 16 warmest years on record took place since 2001), and over time we move from a climate that is relatively benign for most living creatures on Earth to a climate that is a lot less hospitable. “But with the record in now for 2015, 1988 is not even in the top 20 of warmest years”. 10 of the 12 months in 2015 set the record for their hottest respective months.

This was also the first month since records were kept (going back to 1880) that the global monthly temperature was higher than 1 deg. C.