Thursday, 7 February 2019

As 2019 weather hits the ground running NASA claim the last 5 years have been the warmest since records began and last year was the 4th warmest

Photo PressTV
We are just 38 days into 2019 and already we have had record heat in Australia, Chile and Brazil, record cold in the US, Canada and Russia, record snowfall in the US and record rain in the US and Australia and now NASA claims the last 5 years have been the warmest since modern records began and last year was the 4th warmest.
Can we ignore the figures anymore?
Global temperatures in 2018 were 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.83 degrees Celsius) warmer than 1951 to 1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
Globally, 2018's temperatures rank behind those of 2016, 2017 and 2015. The past five years are, collectively, the warmest years in the modern record.
Since the 1880s, the average global surface temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius).
This warming has been driven in large part by increased emissions into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases caused by human activities, according to Schmidt.
Weather dynamics often affect regional temperatures, so not every region on Earth experienced similar amounts of warming.
Warming trends are strongest in the Arctic region, where 2018 saw the continued loss of sea ice.
In addition, mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets continued to contribute to sea level rise.
Increasing temperatures can also contribute to longer fire seasons and some extreme weather events, according to Schmidt.
“The impacts of long-term global warming are already being felt — in coastal flooding, heat waves, intense precipitation and ecosystem change,” said Schmidt.

This line plot shows yearly temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2018, with respect to the 1951-1980 mean

This line plot shows yearly temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2018, with respect to 1951-1980 mean, as recorded by NASA, NOAA, the Japan Meteorological Agency, the Berkeley Earth research group, and the Met Office Hadley Centre (UK). Though there are minor variations from year to year, all five temperature records show peaks and valleys in sync with each other. All show rapid warming in the past few decades, and all show the past decade has been the warmest.
Credits: NASA’s Earth Observatory

These calculations produce the global average temperature deviations from the baseline period from 1951 to 1980.
Because weather station locations and measurement practices change over time, the interpretation of specific year-to-year global mean temperature differences has some uncertainties.
Taking this into account, NASA estimates that 2018’s global mean change is accurate to within 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit, with a 95 per cent certainty level.
NOAA scientists used much of the same raw temperature data, but with a different baseline period and different interpolation into the Earth’s polar and other data-poor regions.
NOAA’s analysis found 2018 global temperatures were 1.42 degrees Fahrenheit (0.79 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average.


For more information about NASA’s Earth science missions, visit:
NOAA’s Global Report is available at