2015 Now On The Books As Hottest Year Ever - By Far - And 2016 Likely Hotter Yet
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Barely three weeks into the new year, climate researchers from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are already predicting that the average surface temperature around the planet is likely to be higher in 2016 than it was in 2015. That would mark the first time the average global temperature reached record-breaking heights for three consecutive years. “It’s not unprecedented to have two years in a row of record-breaking temperatures, but in our records, we’ve never had three years in a row,” climatologist Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said Wednesday. “If 2016 turns out to be as warm as we anticipate, that would be unprecedented in our record book.”
One reason scientists expect 2016 to be even warmer than 2015 is that the lingering effects of the El Niño weather pattern should push temperatures skyward through the first half of the year. “El Niño takes heat out of the oceans and puts it in our atmosphere, and we’ve just had the biggest El Niño in a generation,” said Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University.
El Niño is partially responsible for the extremely high temperatures recorded around the globe in October, November and December, the NASA and NOAA researchers said. Still, even before the effects of El Niño were felt, the planet was experiencing considerable temperature anomalies. Data show that 10 out of 12 months in 2015 broke previous temperature records. The only two that didn’t were January and April.
“Even without El Niño this would have been the warmest year on record,” Schmidt said. “We are looking at a long-term trend, and the factors that cause this long-term trend are continuing to accelerate, namely the increased burning of carbon dioxide fuels and other emissions.”
Ed. - Emphasis added.
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http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-2015-hottest-year-20160119-story.html