Unprecedented: 2016 is 3rd straight warmest year on record globally
NOAA and NASA confirmed today what we've been tracking reporting on MPR's Climate Cast for months now. 2016 was indeed the warmest year on record globally.
In fact 2016 easily bested 2015 and 2014 as the two previous warmest years globally.
Earth is now running about +1.2C warmer than pre-industrial times. That's also more than halfway toward the IPCC goals of +2.0C warming by 2100. This animation from the UK Met Office shows the magnitude of the recent global temperature spike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gfCoNPzGDY
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Unprecedented global warm streak
2016 marks the 3rd straight 'warmest year on record' globally. That's never happened since modern global temperature data-sets came online in 1880.
Last year's record also means that 16 of the 17 warmest years on record globally have occurred since 2001.
And here are two facts even more illustrative of the eye-opening trends of recent years.
The 11 hottest years on record globally have all occurred since 1998.
Each of the 5 warmest years on record have occurred in the past 7 years starting with 2010.
Big picture: A broken climate system?
The big picture on 3 consecutive warmest years on record globally is stunning.
The simple common sense fact is that this: The data shows earth has still not had one cooler than average year globally since 1976, and not even one cooler than average month globally since 1985. In a "normal" climate system we would expect a mix of cooler and warmer than average months and years. That tells us that earth's natural climate system is broken.
Strong reaction
The reaction to this latest climate science news is widespread and ranges from concerning to alarming. I've pulled together some selected clips from climate scientists and news outlets that caught my eye.
Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016 — trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row.
The findings come two days before the inauguration of an American president who has called global warming a Chinese plot and vowed to roll back his predecessor’s efforts to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases.
The data show that politicians cannot wish the problem away. The Earth is heating up, a point long beyond serious scientific dispute, but one becoming more evident as the records keep falling. Temperatures are heading toward levels that many experts believe will pose a profound threat to both the natural world and to human civilization.
2016 is a “data point at the end of many data points that indicates” long-term warming, Deke Arndt, chief of the monitoring branch of the National Centers for Environmental Information, said.
While the record was expected, the joint announcement by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration came in the midst of Senate confirmation hearings for President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominees, several of whom have expressed doubts about established climate science, as has Trump himself.
Many climate scientists, policy experts and environmentalists are concerned about the potential for the incoming administration to limit funding for climate science and roll back both national and international progress toward limiting the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.
According to NOAA data, the global average temperature for 2016 was 1.69°F (0.94°C) above the 20th century average and 0.07°F (0.04°C) above the previous record set last year.
In NASA’s records, 2016 was 1.8°F (0.99°C) above the 1951-1980 average.
NASA's Gavin Schmidt: Temperatures in 2016 were about 1.2 degrees Celsius higher than average temperatures in the late 19th century, which is pretty close to what we consider “pre-industrial” — that’s a slightly mythical beast that the Paris agreement is tied to. Warming rates of a little under 0.2 degrees Celsius warming per decade mean that we are almost certainly committed to more than 1.5 degrees Celsius at this point, and maybe 2 degrees Celsius as well.
Multiple climate analysis groups from the United States and Britain announced Wednesday that 2016 marked the planet’s warmest year on record.
The slew of new releases and accounts about the record warmth are telling.
Since the start of the 21st century, annual global temperature records have been broken five times — in 2005, 2010, 2014, 2015 and now last year.
"The string of records reflect the fact that we are going down a path that is dangerous and well-described," Sarah Myhre, an ocean and climate scientist at the University of Washington, told Mashable in an interview.
"It’s not a path that I would choose the international community to walk down and it’s not the path that I would choose for my son’s life in the future."
The 2016 data confirming 3 straight warmest years on record globally is the latest strong scientific evidence that earth's climate is showing dramatic impacts from climate change. As we embark on a new political reality in Washington D.C. we are about to find out whether U.S. policy will act to increase or decrease the rate of impacts from climate change in the coming decades.
Stay tuned.