2020 Ties With 2016 for Warmest Year Ever Recorded

For a year of dubious superlatives, 2020 has left the planet one last parting gift. On 8 Jan., the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which tracks global climate trends announced that not only had 2020 tied with 2016 for the hottest year on record, it also capped the warmest decade on record. For Europeans, there was an extra bonus: the region just had its hottest year ever. If there was ever any doubt that the world is heating up due to increased fossil fuel emissions, they have been effectively quashed.
In a year already defined by the record melting of Greenland’s glaciers, near-record levels of shrinking Arctic sea ice, wildfires blazing across Siberia, and the hottest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica, the latest findings shouldn’t be surprising, says senior C3S scientist Freja Vamborg. “Inevitably if you have an upward trend, which we have been seeing for some time now, well, at some point you are going to bypass annual records and eventually decadal ones as well. As long as we are don’t reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are the main driver behind this increase, then we will continue breaking these records.”

Nor should anyone be letting out a sigh of relief for the fact that we only tied 2016 for hottest year. The year 2016 was marked by a particularly strong El Niño event, a weather pattern that generally contributes to warmer temperatures. 2020, by contrast, was dominated by a La Ni&ntild...

Source: TIME: Science - January 8, 2021 Category: Science Authors: Aryn Baker Tags: Uncategorized climate change Londontime overnight Source Type: news