“The globe is warmer now than it has been in the last 100 years and more likely in at least 5,000 years,” said Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis.
This is the third time in the last 10 years that the average yearly temperature has broken all previous records, the previous years being 2005 and 2010. 2014 is especially surprising since it is not an El Niño year. This was the first time since 1990 that a global temperature record was broken in the absence of El Niño. Scientists predict that this unfortunate record-breaking trend will continue as the planet warms.
“The long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Such conclusions are being drawn across the world. The Japan Meteorological Agency released a report last week, which also concluded that 2014 was the warmest year in the last 120 years.
Having a record-breaking warm year doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone experiences extreme heat. In the US Midwest, polar vortexes created a colder than average year. In fact, most of the world’s land did not face record-breaking heat, though the rise in temperatures was still high. The average land surface temperature was 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the average for the 20th century, which is the fourth highest mark since 1880. However, western Alaska, eastern Russia, inner South America, and the Australian coasts were hit by record-breaking highs. However, the most troubling increase was over the oceans, where temperatures were 1.03 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, a new record by itself.
“Every continent had some aspect of record high temperatures,” Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, said. The NOAA stated that six months of 2014 were the hottest on record.
