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EARTH SIMMERED TO to the sixth hottest year on record in 2021, according to several newly released temperature measurements.
Scientists said the exceptionally hot year is part of a long-term warming trend that shows hints of accelerating.
Two US science agencies – Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – and a private measuring group released their calculations for last year’s global temperature today, and all said it was not far behind ultra-hot 2016 and 2020.
Six different calculations found 2021 was between the fifth and seventh hottest year since the late 1800s.
Nasa said 2021 tied with 2018 for sixth warmest, while the NOAA puts last year in sixth place by itself, ahead of 2018.
Scientists say a La Nina – natural cooling of parts of the central Pacific that changes weather patterns globally and brings chilly deep ocean water to the surface – dampened global temperatures just as its flip side, El Nino, boosted them in 2016.
Still, they said 2021 was the hottest La Nina year on record and that the year did not represent a cooling off of human-caused climate change but provided more of the same heat.
“So it’s not quite as headline-dominating as being the warmest on record, but give it another few years and we’ll see another one of those” records, said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, of the Berkeley Earth monitoring group that also ranked 2021 the sixth hottest.
“It’s the long-term trend, and it’s an indomitable march upward.”
Gavin Schmidt, the climate scientist who heads Nasa’s temperature team, said “the long-term trend is very, very clear. And it’s because of us. And it’s not going to go away until we stop increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere”.
The last eight years have been the eight hottest on record, Nasa and NOAA data agree.
Global temperatures, averaged over a 10-year period to take out natural variability, are nearly 1.1 degrees warmer than 140 years ago, their data shows.
The other 2021 measurements came from the Japanese Meteorological Agency and satellite measurements by the Copernicus Climate Change Service in Europe and the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
There was such a distinctive jump in temperatures about eight to 10 years ago that scientists have started looking at whether the rise in temperatures is speeding up.
Both Schmidt and Hausfather said early signs point to that but it is hard to know for sure.
“I think you can see the acceleration, but whether it’s statistically robust is not quite clear,” Mr Schmidt said in an interview.
“If you just look at the last 10 years, how many of them are way above the trend line from the previous 10 years? Almost all of them.”
The global average temperature last year was 14.7 degrees, according to the NOAA.
In 1988, Nasa’s then-chief climate scientist James Hansen grabbed headlines when he testified to Congress about global warming in a year that was the hottest on record at the time.
Now, the 14.3 degrees of 1988 ranks as the 28th hottest year on record.
Last year, 1.8 billion people in 25 Asian, African and Middle Eastern nations had their hottest years on record, including China, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Iran, Myanmar and South Korea, according to Berkeley Earth.
The deep ocean, where most heat is stored in the seas, also set a record for warmth in 2021, according to a separate new study.
“Ocean warming, aside from causing coral bleaching and threatening sea life and fish populations we rely upon for roughly 25% of our protein intake globally, is destabilising Antarctic ice shelves and threatens massive … sea level rise if we don’t act,” said study co-author Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University climate scientist.
The last time Earth had a cooler than normal year by NOAA or Nasa calculations was 1976.
That means 69% of the people on the planet – more than five billion people under the age of 45 – have never experienced such a year, based on United Nations data.
North Carolina state climatologist Kathie Dello, 39, who was not part of the new reports but said they make sense, said: “I’ve only lived in a warming world and I wish that the younger generations did not have to say the same. It didn’t have to be this way.”
Tax the least well off that will fix it
Still felt Baltic for most of the Summer
@Geoff Bateman: complaining it felt cold, even though it was obviously a very good summer. Has the holidaying make you lose touch of where your from?
Surely the world is much cooler today than previous decades ?
NASA’s Dr. James Hansen reported that in 1990 the global average temperature was 59.8°F (15.4°C / 1.7 above pre-industrial)
In 2021 it was reported as by the WMO58.64°F / 14.8°C
@Credalytics ☘️: The WMO have not yet released global temperatures for 2021. They last released data for 2020:
https:// public.wmo.int/en/our-mandate/climate/wmo-statement-state-of-global-climate
However, the WHO said that 2016 averaged 14.8 degrees Celsius (58.64°F), or 1.3C (2.3F) above the pre-industrial average.
So your fibbing about the WHO saying that about 2021.
See: World Shatters Heat Records in 2016
Anyway, the 1990 measurement was inaccurate, we have added huge amount of historic temperature measurements from weather station sice then, going back to 1750, making measurement far more accurate.
By 2020, the Earth was 1.2 Celsius above the 1850-1900 average (land and Sea). And global land temperatures have increased by 1.5 degrees C over the past 250 years, past 50 years (between the decades of the 1950s and 2000s) the land surface warmed by 0.91±0.05 °C.
There is no other explanation why this has happened other than adding 2.5 trillion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, which we know is a greenhouse gas, we first found this out over 100 years ago:
Arrhenius, S., 1896. XXXI. On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 41(251), pp.237-276.
And the most reliable source for Global Temperatures is Berkeley Earth:
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/ireland
Berkeley Earth was started by physicist Richard Muller in 2010, a climate change sceptic who was very critical of other temperature records (UK Met office, NOAA, Japan Met Office). So he started the Berkeley Earth project to satisfy himself, to see if global temperature are increasing and if so, are humans are the cause.
He is now a former climate change sceptic.
Richard Muller: I Was Wrong on Climate Change – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTk8Dhr15Kwl
The fact that he stands up and admits he was wrong shows a great deal of integrity.
@David Jordan:
James Hansen, NASA – 1984
“Today the mean temperature of the earth’s surface is 288K” (14.85°C) https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_ha04600x.pdf
WMO using 5 datasets “The average global temperature in 2020 was about 14.9°C”
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/2020-was-one-of-three-warmest-years-record
Minus 30C for the last month around here bring on the heat I say
@Ned: Cold? At this time of year? At this time of day? In your part of the country? Localised entirely within your back garden?
@David Jordan: Just curious as to what evidence you have to support your assumption that Ned has a back garden? I can’t see any myself but hey, what would I know? No doubt though you’ll provide a link to some academic article or other that supports it. Should make for interesting reading…
@David Jordan: a Rhodes Scholars reply I say
@William Tallon: It’s just a Simpson’s inspired joke.
Ireland’s emissions were ~40 millions tonnes in 2016 vis-a-vis the UK at about 400 million tonnes.
Using the figures from the UK’s climate modelling, a basic calculation for Ireland would be the UK’s NetZero target divided by 10.
Therefore NetZero Irish Emissions mitigates an utterly minuscule and irrelevant 0.0004°C hypothetical global warming by 2050.
For context a person can scarcely detect a temperature change of 4-5 degrees if the rate is less than a half degree per minute.
The current estimate for Ireland’s climate action plan is €125 Billion to hypothetically stop the earth warming 0.0004°C
@Credalytics ☘️: there’s a tax for that ! That’s the greens solution.
@Credalytics ☘️: That’s odd. The WMO have not yet released global temperatures for 2021. Do you have inside contacts? They last released data for 2020:
https:// public.wmo.int/en/our-mandate/climate/wmo-statement-state-of-global-climate
However, I found the WHO said that 2016 averaged 14.8 degrees Celsius (58.64°F), or 1.3C (2.3F) above the pre-industrial average.
See: World Shatters Heat Records in 2016
Anyway, the 1990 measurement was inaccurate, we have added huge amount of historic temperature measurements from weather station sice then, going back to 1750, making temperature measurement far more accurate.
In 2020, the Earth was 1.2 Celsius above the 1850-1900 average (land and Sea). And global land temperatures have increased by 1.5 degrees C over the past 250 years, past 50 years (between the decades of the 1950s and 2000s) the land surface warmed by 0.91±0.05 °C.
There is no other explanation why this has happened other than adding 2.5 trillion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, which we know is a greenhouse gas, we first found this out over 100 years ago:
Arrhenius, S., 1896. XXXI. On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, 41(251), pp.237-276.
And the most reliable source for Global Temperatures is Berkeley Earth:
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/ireland
Berkeley Earth was started by physicist Richard Muller in 2010, a climate change sceptic who was very critical of other temperature records (UK Met office, NOAA, Japan Met Office). So he started the Berkeley Earth project to satisfy himself, to see if global temperature are increasing and if so, are humans are the cause.
He is now a former climate change sceptic.
Richard Muller: I Was Wrong on Climate Change – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTk8Dhr15Kwl
The fact that he stands up and admits he was wrong shows a great deal of integrity.
@David Jordan: here we go again the long winded uninteresting climate text not worth reading
@David Jordan:
WMO reported in 2021 the 2020 figures.
“The average global temperature in 2020 was about 14.9°C, 1.2 (± 0.1) °C above the pre-industrial (1850-1900) level”:
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/2020-was-one-of-three-warmest-years-record
We have many accounts however in publications by WMO, Hansen, NASA etc stating the 1950-1980 T baseline was 59°F (15°C)
“The globe’s average temperature for 1995 was an estimated 59.8 degrees Fahrenheit, barely edging out 1990 and about 0.8 degree above the 1950-1980 average.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-14-mn-24222-story.html
It appears this baseline was was later cooled to 57.2°F (14°C)
Orwell had it right, he who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
@Credalytics ☘️: I see, you believe that there is no warming, the alleged warming is an artefact of lowering the 1951-1980 baseline average from 59°F to 57.2°F (1 Celsius).
That’s hilarious!
It’s like someone standing in the sea up to their knees deciding to walk towards the shore, so the sea gets shallower and then claims the water lapping at their ankles proves the tide isn’t rising!
It’s the trend that matters. The only way to turn this rise to a fall is to rotate the chart, not change the baseline.
Is the line rising?
“When using a common baseline, all datasets agree.
Changing a baseline does not change the underlying data or trend.”
- NASA
@Credalytics ☘️: Here’s the same chart without the Y Axis, is the line rising?
https://i.imgur.com/WLUCSav.png
It’s still rising, the baseline does not matter. Since 1900, the rise is 1.2 Celsius. I am not making reference to any baseline, I deleted it so it does not distract you.
@Credalytics ☘️: Here’s the same chart without the Y Axis, is the line rising?
https://i.imgur.com/WLUCSav.png
It’s still rising, the baseline does not matter.
Since 1900, the rise is 1.2 Celsius. I am not making reference to any baseline, I deleted it so it does not distract you.
@David Jordan:
I like your analogy of the tide, however my view of the situation is that it has gone out and the climate narrative has been found with no clothes on.
Take for example where it is reported that the earth today at 14.9°C is considered a climate crisis but the slightly warmer temperature of 15°C was described as “comfortable” back in 2010:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page2.php
@David Jordan:
There’s no values on the y axis on that chart.
@David Jordan: do you have a job
I doubt it when have so much time to write these long winded stories
It’s like the seasons have have shifted two months. We are getting frost frequently into May and the season is milder come the end of the year.
@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: teetering on the edge of a polar flip
Earth will recover when we are gone.
have your say