You know we have those annoying gnat-like senators pissing about in Federal Parliament asserting that climate change isn’t real because they haven’t seen the “empirical evidence” or some legit bullshit like that?
Not that we needed any, but here’s more evidence. A lot more evidence.
2016, the bastard of a year that it was, was also officially the hottest year on record. What’s more, it ranks as the third year in a row where a new record has been set.
NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released their findings into global temperatures over the last calendar year, and it is a grim, grim picture.
Average surface temperatures over both sea and land was measured at 14.84 degrees Celsius, which rates as a full 0.94 of a degree *above* the average temperature recorded through the entire 20th century.
A video NASA released earlier this morning mapping warming and temperature trends globally over more than a century is some seriously scary shit.
2016 was the hottest year on record, continuing a decades-long warming trend, according to @NASAGISS & @NOAA: https://t.co/vsbeRX8tig pic.twitter.com/RGw7dJd03L
— NASA (@NASA) January 18, 2017
But still, no “empirical evidence,” etc.
The rise in temperatures is a combination of both man-made factors and a global El Nino trend, resulting in a global average temperature 0.4 degrees above the one recorded in 2015.
This also makes it the fifth time in 12 years that the highest recorded average global temperature record was broken, following on from 2005, 2010, 2014, and 2015.
The temporary good news, however, is that experts believe that once the current El Nino conditions fade, the planet is unlikely to break the record again in 2017. But a new high mark is expected to be set sooner, rather than later, according to Piers Forster, climate expert at the University of Leeds:
“Unless we have a major volcanic eruption, I expect the record to be broken again within a few years.”
Now there’s a sobering thought. How do we slow down the heating of the globe? Cross our fingers and hope a mountain explodes.
Among other events in 2016, the year saw mammoth wildfires in Alberta rank as the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history. Meanwhile North America achieved its hottest year ever recorded, and parts of India recorded a day of 51 degrees, topping previous single-day marks for the country.
Sea-ice in both the Arctic and in Antarctica are both at reported all-time lows for mid-January readings.
But, y’know, the “empirical evidence.”
Source: ABC News.
