Data from NASA shows 2022 was fifth warmest year on record
Trends continue to show warming temperatures across world
Trends continue to show warming temperatures across world
Trends continue to show warming temperatures across world
New data from NASA shows that temperatures are on the rise worldwide.
According to NASA, 2022 reached a new record high for carbon dioxide emissions, and the year finished 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit above the average from 1951 to 1980. It also tied with 2015 as the fifth warmest year on record.
"That statistic of the nine most recent years being nine warmest years on record, that's incredibly striking," said Lesley Ott, a climate scientist for NASA.
Ott said the ramping up of temperatures is not simply natural variability.
"We know that climate change is caused by greenhouse gases emitted from human activities," she said.
In 2022, global climate was affected by the weather pattern known as La Niña, which typically leads to cooler global air temperatures because of cooler than normal ocean surface water, but the year was still exceptionally warm.
"Even among La Niña years, this was the warmest La Niña year on record, so basically the warmest of the cool years," Ott said.
NASA collects temperature data from thousands of surface weather stations across the globe and uses satellite data to measure things such as storm development and how fires or hurricanes affect communities.
"Those are some of the kinds of data sets that we get from satellites that tell us a whole lot more than just the temperature, but tell us how that temperature change actually affects everyone around the world," Ott said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also keeps records using surface station data and analyzes those observations independently, using its own methods.
Its 2022 summary found that global ocean heat content, or heat measured within 2,000 meters of depth, was at a new record high.
This past December also ranked as the eighth warmest December on record.
In New Hampshire, the temperature has risen more than 3 degrees since the start of the 20th century, with the fastest warming occurring in winter, which has warmed by more than 4 degrees since 1900.
"Year after year, scientists at multiple agencies and really even agencies across the world look at the same data and verify each other's conclusions," Ott said. "So that's one of the ways that we have a lot of confidence in our findings."