Last Seven Years The Seven Hottest Years On Record; We May Surpass 1.5 C This Decade
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Only the “super” El Niño year of 2016 appears to have been slightly hotter in the era of reliable measurements dating to the late 1800s, according to the results from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Britain’s Met Office and Berkeley Earth. NASA finds that 2020 edged out 2016 by less than a hundredth of a degree Celsius, while the other three groups say it fell shy by a mere .01 to .02 degrees Celsius (.02 to .04 degrees Fahrenheit).“The last seven years have been the seven warmest on record,” said Ahira Sánchez-Lugo, a climate expert with NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. “And the 10 warmest years have now occurred since 2005.”
Experts said that another year as hot as 2016 coming so soon suggests a swift step up the climate escalator. And it implies that a momentous new temperature record — breaching the critical 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming threshold for the first time — could occur as soon as later this decade.
Particularly striking is the unassuming way that 2020 joined the ranks of the very hottest years. Unlike 2016, it did so without any substantial boost from El Niño. El Niño, part of a natural climate cycle with global consequences, spreads unusually warm waters across the tropical Pacific Ocean and generally unleashes hotter temperatures as a result.
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Some of 2020?s most extreme climate conditions were focused in northern Siberia and parts of the Arctic, with annual average temperatures between 3 and 6 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal. In certain months, these anomalies topped 8 degrees Celsius (14.4 degrees Fahrenheit). Even after a somewhat cooler December compared with previous months, Siberia stands out on 2020 temperature maps as a large red splotch of unusually hot conditions. The Arctic as a whole is warming at about three times the rate of the rest of the globe. In the remote Siberian town of Verkhoyansk, about 3,000 miles east of Moscow, the mercury climbed to 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) on June 20, the highest temperature recorded north of the Arctic Circle since record-keeping began in 1885.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2021/2020-tied-for-hottest-year-on-record/?itid=sf_climate-environment
