The year 2014 has now been confirmed as the world’s warmest ever on record. Not only this, nine out of ten hottest years on the planet have occurred since 2000. Proof enough of global warming. Weather records have now been maintained since 1880. The high temperatures recorded over the last year broke the warmest year records of 2005 and 2014.
Two federal agencies responsible for monitoring global climate trends, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), revealed these shocking facts on Friday. Data collected by these independent bodies was analyzed by climate experts, who then calculated globally averaged temperature over land and water surfaces.
It was found to be 58.24 degrees Fahrenheit, 1.24degF (0.69degC) above the 20th century average and the highest ever on Earth since 1880. According to their calculations, nine of the 10 warmest years now on record have occurred during the 21st century.
Earlier this month, the Japan Meteorological Agency had made similar announcements after checking up their records, maintained since 1891.
“Humans are literally cooking their planet,” said Jonathan Overpeck, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Arizona.
“It just shows that human emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, are taking over the Earth’s climate system,” Overpeck said. “The data are clear: The Earth is warming, and humans are causing the bulk of this warming.”
As if that wasn’t enough, the prediction is that the coming years are going to be even warmer.
“A record warm year, especially absent (the warming effects of) a strong El Niño, is mostly a reminder that the long-term trend for Earth’s temperature is up, up, up. The dice are definitely loaded in favor of progressively hotter years, and the odds will increase as long as atmospheric greenhouse gases increase,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University climate scientist.
We are seeing the world around us getting hotter day by day in the form of sea levels rising faster than ever before, the polar ice caps melting, more frequent flooding along coasts and more frequent and intense heat waves. Inspite of that, we have been doing little to stem the rate at which we are pushing our world to the brink of disaster.