×

Earth sets hottest year record for third-straight time

WASHINGTON — Earth sizzled to a third-straight record hot year in 2016, with scientists mostly blaming man-made global warming with help from a natural El Nino that’s now gone.

Two U.S. agencies and international weather groups reported Wednesday that last year was the warmest on record. They measure global temperatures in slightly different ways, and came up with a range of increases, from minuscule to what top American climate scientists described as substantial.

They’re “all singing the same song even if they are hitting different notes along the way. The pattern is very clear,” said Deke Arndt of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NOAA calculated that the average global temperature for 2016 was 58.69 degrees (14.84 degrees Celsius) — beating the previous year by 0.07 degrees (0.04 Celsius).

NASA’s figures , which include more of the Arctic, are higher at 0.22 degrees (0.12 Celsius) warmer than 2015. The Arctic “was enormously warm, like totally off the charts compared to everything else,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, where the space agency monitors global temperatures.

The British meteorological office determined that 2016 barely beat 2015 by 0.018 degrees (0.01 Celsius). The World Meteorological Organization and other monitoring groups agreed that 2016 was a record, with the international weather agency chief Petteri Taalas saying “temperatures only tell part of the story” of extreme warming. The figures are based on ground-level temperatures. Satellite calculations also showed that it was the warmest year, Schmidt said.

“This is clearly a record,” he said. “We are now no longer only looking at something that only scientists can see, but is apparent to people in our daily lives.”

Temperature records go back to 1880. This is the fifth time in a dozen years that the globe has set a new annual heat record. Records have been set in 2016, 2015, 2014, 2010 and 2005.

Arndt said the 0.07 difference for 2016 is actually one of the largest NOAA has seen between record years. What’s more important than any single record is the multi-decade “clear warming trend since the late 20th Century,” said Arndt, NOAA’s climate monitoring chief.

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
   

Starting at $4.38/week.

Subscribe Today