2016 was Earth’s hottest year– for the third year in a row

Despite argument in some circles that climate change is nothing more than a hoax, 2016 marked the third straight year of record-setting heat, statistics released Wednesday by scientists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have confirmed.

According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the globally-averaged surface temperatures finished 1.78 degrees Fahrenheit (0.99 degrees Celsius) above the mid-20th century mean for 2016, making it the hottest year since modern records were first kept in 1880.

An independent review of the climate data by NOAA confirmed that 2016 was indeed the hottest year ever recorded, but determined than average temperature across land and ocean surfaces was 1.69 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, or 0.07 degrees hotter than 2015.

Since the start of the 21st century, the annual global temperature record has been broken on five occasions (2005, 2010, 2014, 2015, and 2016), the agencies reported. Furthermore, according to CNN.com, 16 of the 17 hottest years in the planet’s history have come since the year 2000, while the last time annual temperatures dipped to an all-time low was back in 1911.

“2016 is remarkably the third record year in a row,” GISS Director Gavin Schmidt confirmed in a statement which noted that he and his colleagues are 95% certain about their conclusions. “We don’t expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear.”

Impact of climate change ‘as plain as day,’ say experts

According to the New York Times, this marks the first time in the modern era of climate-related data that record highs have been reported in three consecutive years, and while El Niño weather pattern was responsible for intensifying matters, the newspaper said that the primary factor was the long-term warming trend blamed linked to increasing greenhouse gas levels.

Since the late 19th century, Earth’s average surface temperature has increase roughly 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) due largely to increased carbon dioxide and other emissions into the atmosphere, said NASA. In addition to 2016 being the hottest year on record, eight out of the 12 months in the year also set records, while three others were the second-warmest ever.

Furthermore, according to NOAA, both the globally-averaged sea surface temperature and the globally-averaged land surface temperature were the highest ever recorded (1.35 degree and 2.57 degrees Fahrenheit above average, respectively). It was also the hottest year of all time in North America and the second-warmest in South American and Africa, the organization added. Sea ice extents in the Arctic and Antarctic seas also reached historic lows.

“(T)he spate of record-warm years that we have seen in the 21st century can only be explained by human-caused climate change,” Michael Mann of the Earth Science Center at Pennsylvania State University told CNN.com. “The effect of human activity on our climate is no longer subtle. It’s plain as day, as are the impacts – in the form of record floods, droughts, superstorms, and wildfires – that it is having on us and our planet.”

—–

Image credit: Thinkstock

The post 2016 was Earth’s hottest year– for the third year in a row appeared first on Redorbit.

redOrbit.com
offers Science, Space, Technology, Health news, videos, images and reference information. For the latest science news, space news, technology news, health news visit redOrbit.com frequently. Learn something new every day.”