Global temperatures in 2019 were among the hottest on record.
And that’s not a good thing (despite the giddy I’m-wearing-shorts-in-January updates from my East Coast USA family and friends).
Last year’s high temps—second only to those in 2016—continued the planet’s long-term warming trend, rising 1.8 °F over the 1951-to-1980 mean, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
“The decade that just ended is clearly the warmest decade on record,” GISS Director Gavin Schmidt said in a statement. “Every decade since the 1960s clearly has been warmer than the one before.”
Temperature records from NASA, NOAA, Berkeley Earth, Cowtan and Way, and the UK Met Office Hadley Center show rapid warming in the past few decades, with a recent upswing in thermal energy (via NASA GISS/Gavin Schmidt)
Using climate models and statistical analysis of global temperature data, scientists confirmed what we already know: This is the product of increased CO2 emissions caused by human activities.
“We crossed over into more than 2 °F warming territory in 2015 and we are unlikely to go back,” Schmidt explained. “This shows that what’s happening is persistent, not a fluke due to some weather phenomenon.
“We know that the long-term trends are being driven by the increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” he added.
Not every location on Earth experiences the same amount of warming, though.
Weather dynamics affect regional temperatures, which may explain why the Arctic region has heated up slightly more than three times faster than the rest of the world since 1970.
Scientists have warned of irreversible climate tipping points—between 1.8 and 3.6 °F above pre-industrial levels—which many believe could be reached within the next decade.
In November, more than 11,000 experts declared a climate emergency, suggesting that “untold human suffering” is unavoidable without profound shifts in activity.
Achieving the Paris Agreement goal of 1.5 °C (34.7 °F) global warming is ambitious, yes. But it could also mean that a child born today could see an end to coal use by their sixth birthday, and net-zero emissions by their 31st.
For more insight, check out NASA’s full 2019 surface temperature data set and methodology online.
More on Geek.com:
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