2014 was warmest year on modern records according to NASA and NOAA

NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) in New York annually gathers data from 6,300 weather stations as well as ship and buoy based instruments and data from Arctic Research Stations. According to this year’s GISS data, 2014 is the warmest year to date. This data was verified by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Since modern record keeping began in 1880, Earth’s average surface temperature has warmed by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit driven by an increase in greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. The majority of the increase has been seen over the last three decades.

“The observed long-term warming trend and the ranking of 2014 as the warmest year on record reinforces the importance for NASA to study Earth as a complete system, and particularly to understand the role and impacts of human activity,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington in a statement.

The 10 warmest years on record have now occurred since 1998, with nine of those years occurring since 2000.

“This is the latest in a series of warm years, in a series of warm decades. While the ranking of individual years can be affected by chaotic weather patterns, the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt.

According to researchers they expect to see fluctuations in annual temperatures due to events such as El Niño or La Niña which cause unusual warming or cooling in the pacific. However, 2014 was a “El Niño-neutral” year and still broke the record.

In a report late last year from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) it was also reported that temperatures are currently being kept cooler than they would otherwise be by gasses from recent volcanic activity. The research, published in the journal Nature shows that without the volcanic activity, temperatures wicked gave risen by as much as an additional 0.12 degrees Celsius since 2000.

The NOAA also stated, in December of last year, that some coastal areas of the United States have already passed the tipping point and will soon begin to experience annual flooding by 2050.

“NOAA provides decision makers with timely and trusted science-based information about our changing world. As we monitor changes in our climate, demand for the environmental intelligence NOAA provides is only growing. It’s critical that we continue to work with our partners, like NASA, to observe these changes and to provide the information communities need to build resiliency,” ,” said Richard Spinrad, NOAA chief scientist.

The NASA and NOAA results are based on an average, global surface temperature reading and do not indicate a uniform heating of every region. In 2014, for example, parts of the US Midwest and East Coast were cooler than normal, while Alaska, California, Arizona and Nevada had their warmest years on record.

World leaders are expected to meet in Paris in December of this year to discuss a global approach to climate change and follow up on progress and agreements made at the Lima Conference in December 2014.

Be social, please share!

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *