The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the NASA have separately announced that 2015 was the warmest year on record since 1880 when the first register began. In 2015, the average Earth temperature was 1.62°F higher than the average temperature of the 20th century. The last four years have been characterized for making new records of increasing temperatures.
Findings confirmed that 2015 was 0.23 degrees Fahrenheit (0.13 degrees Celsius) hotter than 2014, according to the NASA. It was explained by both the NASA and NOAA that they carry their own independent registers of global temperatures. The institutions used thermometers, ocean buoys and ship readings in order to measure temperatures over the oceans and land.
“A lot of times, you actually look at these numbers, when you break a record, you break it by a few hundredths of a degree. But this record, we literally smashed. It was over a quarter of a degree Fahrenheit, and that’s a lot for the global temperature,” said Thomas Karl, director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
In previous years, the NASA and NOAA hadn’t been so sure about the temperature increase like in 2015, when El Niño caused a significant rise of the temperature in ocean waters in the Pacific. It was remarked that there haven’t been any benefits in the long term for global warming, even when the causes are recognized by big governments and people.
“It’s breaking the record because we also have this unusually strong El Niño, but at the same time we know the ocean is now absorbing two times more heat than around the last time we had a big El Niño, which is quite a while ago,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University to the Washington Post.
It was stressed that a strong El Niño is still occurring in 2016, as a consequence, it is expected that 2016 will be hotter than last year. The Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, said on Twitter that the United States cannot elect a president who ignores science, since temperature changes are harming the planet. On the other hand, Republican party presidential candidates have not made declarations about the climate announcements.
Last year, it was concluded in Paris by global leaders that Earth temperatures should not surpass 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. That being said, by 2015 we have walked half the path, so actions must be taken if we don’t want to keep making new temperature records.
Gavin Schmidt, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, said that 2015 is the first year when the record is clearly above 1 degree Celsius above the 19th century. 2015 was sharply marked by El Niño, and other natural phenomena such as the Hurricane Patricia, which was the most aggressive hurricane ever registered by the National Hurricane Center.
Several scientists have proposed that if El Niño continues, 2016 is going to be hotter than 2015. On the other hand, researchers such as Kevin Trenberth, a climate change analyst at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said that 2016 will be probably cooler because he thinks El Niño have already started its decrement.
Source: NOAA