Global Temperatures in 2015 Warmest Ever on Record

Last year was the hottest year in recorded history, scientists said Wednesday.

NASA and NOAA independently track temperatures at thousands of weather stations on land and water, from buoys in tropical seas to field equipment at the Earth’s poles, and each analyzes the differences over time. This was the highest among all 136 years in the 1880-2015 record, surpassing the previous record set last year by 0.16°C and marking the fourth time a global temperature record has been set this century. NASA and NOAA each interpreted the data with slightly different results. “When NASA first started talking about global warming, it was in 1988”.

The NOAA reports that average temperature across terrestrial and ocean surfaces was 1.62°F (0.90°C) above the 20th century average.

Regardless of El Niño, the long-term warming trend over the past few decades can be linked to the burning of fossil fuels that are releasing gases such as carbon dioxide, he said.

“Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with 15 of the 16 warmest years on record occurring since 2001”.

Gavin Schmidt of NASA called 2015 “very, very clearly the warmest year by a long chalk”.

A similar pronouncement a year ago that 2014 set a record was criticized by some warming skeptics because scientists said the margin of error in measurements meant there was a reasonable chance that actual 2014 temperatures could have been slightly cooler than another year, even though those recorded by instruments in 2014 were the warmest ever.

Meanwhile, the Met Office, the U.K.’s national weather service, released in its forecast that the warm temperature trend is about to continue up to this year with a global average temperature ranging from 0.72 °C to 0.96 °C higher than the (1961-1990) average of 14.0 °C.

“Climate change is the challenge of our generation, and NASAs vital work on this important issue affects every person on Earth, ” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

Overall, Canada’s average temperature from January 1 to December 31 was up 1.3 degrees Celsius from the historic average measured over the last 68 years.

Central New York and most of the Northeast, by contrast, were about normal, as a bitterly cold February held down yearly temperatures.

The agency reported, “The a year ago with a below-average temperature was 1996”.

NASA has created an animation showing the long-term warming trend over Earth’s surface, showing what took place between 1880 and 2015 in just 30 seconds.

That is 1.24 degrees above the 20th-century average of 57 degrees Fahrenheit.

And then the year was capped off with a powerful El Nino event that led to unseasonably warm storms during the holiday season, including the appearance of Hurricane Patricia, the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.