For the first six months of the year, 2015 beat 2010 for the hottest on record.
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Africa had above-average temperatures across most of the continent throughout last year, while Australia saw its third warmest year on record, the report found. There is, however, a measure of uncertainty for annual rankings in any of these due to uncertainty in the underlying annual global temperature anomalies themselves.
Going back to the start of 2014, NOAA found 10 of the 18 months set or tied their respective month’s global warmth record, at the time.
“This report represents data from around the globe, from hundreds of scientists and gives us a picture of what happened in 2014”.
According to a TOI post, the report focused mainly on how the climate has been changing, not merely in regards to temperature, but also from the oceans’ depth to the outer atmosphere.
“The year 2014 experienced a relatively large number of warm days and few cool days in all locations where there are data, apart from the mid-western United States”, the report said. This pattern played a major role in several regional climate outcomes. Atmospheric Carbon dioxide concentrations are up by 1.9 ppm in 2014, reaching a global average of 397.2 ppm for the year, compared to 354.0 in 1990. This year, forecasters are predicting this El Nino will get stronger, not weaker. And according to the 2014 National Climate Assessment, rising nighttime lows can also tax power grids, as air conditioning demand stays high, and can negatively impact crops and farm animals. Oceans absorb over 90 percent of Earth’s excess heat from greenhouse gas forcing. On Alaska’s North Slope, four of the five permafrost observatories showed record high temperatures at 20 meters below the surface. Interestingly, a small area of the north Atlantic Ocean southeast of southern Greenland was record cold in January-June 2015. The Antarctic maximum sea ice extent reached a record high of 7.78 million square miles on September 20, which is 220,000 square miles more than the previous record of 7.56 million square miles that occurred in 2013. Moreover, Arctic sea ice is at its lowest since the study began being released decades ago.
The report, made public by the American Meteorological Society, confirms what researchers have been telling us for ages now: our planet is getting warmer and warmer, and a build-up of man-made greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere is the chief culprit.
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With 91 tropical cyclones in 2014, above the 1981-2010 average of 82 storms, 2014 witnessed more disturbances.
