2016 Remains on Track to be Hottest Year on Record
- csrice8
- Dec 28, 2016
- 1 min read
The year 2016 remains on track to be the hottest year on record, with average global temperatures set to break even the records of 2015, according to data covering the first eleven months of the year.
Temperatures spiked in the early months of 2016 because of a very strong El Niño event and remained well above the long-term average for the latter part of the year according to the reports from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts
Long-term indicators of human-caused climate change, including record carbon dioxide concentrations, and glacier melt, and low sea ice, continued.
The World Meteorological Organization will issue consolidated figures on 2016 global temperatures in early 2017. November data confirms WMO’s assessment issued in November that 2016 will very likely be the hottest year since records began in the mid 1880s.
The WMO provisional statement on the climate in 2016, released for the UN Climate Change conference in Marrakech, Morocco, cited preliminary data (to the end of September) that 2016’s global temperatures are approximately 1.2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels. All the hottest years on record apart from 1998 (during which there was a strong El Niño) have been this century.
Dave Sills
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