Rising temperatures last year limited the world’s hottest decade in modern times, federal climate scientists said Thursday.
In a new climate study, the National Aviation and Space Administration ranked 2020 in a dead heat with 2016 being the hottest year since the official record keeping began in 1880. The heat of the record came despite a chilling La Niña Pacific Ocean current, which took a beating that sent world temperatures down slightly in December.
In a separate evaluation released at the same time, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which relies on slightly different temperature records and methods, calculated that the global average temperature was the second highest so far last year – just 0.04 degrees Fahrenheit to set the record set in 2016.
“These long-term trends are very, very clear,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. “This is another proof that we are telling the planet to be warming decade by decade by decade.”
Scientists from NASA and NOAA have predicted 2020 as a year of extremes, driven by rising levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that trap heat in the atmosphere.