Record-setting temperatures in 2015

StudyHall.Rocks
Researchers believe 2016 will also be a record year.
Researchers believe 2016 will also be a record year.
Stock image.
Surface temperatures during 2015 were the warmest on record, part of a relentless long-term trend.
     
     And while the annual announcement of rising temperatures has become routine -- 15 of the top 16 warmest years have occurred since 2001 -- an El Niño system pushed temperatures even higher, NASA scientists said during an online news conference Jan. 20.
     Across the globe, temperatures in 2015 were an average of 0.13 degree Celsius (0.23 degree Fahrenheit) above 2014, according to NASA. Scientists at the conference said they expect 2016 to also be a record year.
     In 2015, temperatures were "more than a degree Celsius higher than the mean temperatures of the last 20 years of the 19th century,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Centers for Environmental Information. “That’s fairly substantial.” 
     During 2015, global records were broken 10 out of 12 months. There was also an El Niño weather system in 2015. An El Niño is defined by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography as a climate change in the equator region of the Pacific Ocean. Its effects are seen in Northern Hemisphere winter.
    But the El Niño was not the sole culprit for the record temperatures, according to Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. 
    “Even without El Niño, this would have been the warmest year on record,” he said. “We’re really looking at a long-term trend and this is just a symptom of that long-term trend. We anticipate that this is going to be continuing because the factors that are causing this long-term trend are continuing to accelerate, and that’s mainly the increasing burning of fossil fuel and the emissions that go with that."
     Scientists caution that they do not tie every storm to climate change. But consequences of warming include the loss of sea ice, increases in sea levels and more rain.
    “As the atmosphere heats up, there’s more water vapor,” Karl explained. “It’s very hard to pin down individual events, but what we’ve seen in general as the atmosphere has warmed, more of the rain falls in heavier events and that’s fairly characteristic over the last several decades.”  
   

     Related:

    NASA In Brief -- Climate still warming, study finds

    Climate change: 4 ways we feel the heat

    If you would like to comment give us a shout or like us on Facebook and tell us what you think.