It's Official: 2015 Was the Warmest Year on Record Matt Shea - AskMen
go to original January 24, 2016

2015 was the Earth's warmest year since record keeping began in 1880, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says. (CNN)

2015 was officially the warmest year in history. News to us, maybe, but not to scientists who had already predicted it would top 2014 — the previous record holder — in part because of huge El Nino weather pattern above the Pacific that’s been releasing ungodly amounts of heat into the atmosphere.

It makes for nineteen consecutive years in which global temperatures have been above average — which as if we need to tell you is unprecedented since records began way back in 1880.

And we’re not talking a small margin here, either. Comparatively speaking, 2015 belted the pants off previous years — almost a third of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than 2014 — raising the spectre of a return to rapid global warming, which hasn’t been in evidence since 1998.

Just in case you want to chalk it all down to that aforementioned El Nino effect, prepare to be disappointed. “The whole system is warming up, relentlessly,” Gerald A. Meehl, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, told the New York Times in a detailed report. Indeed, two consecutive years of record temperatures seem to have put paid to that weird Republican idea going around at the moment that global warming has stopped.

And if you think that oddly warm December was partly to blame, you’d be partly right — it was the hottest and wettest since record-keeping began. The worst news? Looks like 2016 may not be much better, given this El Nino doesn’t seem to be too interested in leaving anytime soon. But still, we’re talking a long-term problem. The huge recent strides we’ve made in clean energy are welcome, but we need more in the way of long-term solutions.

See the original at AskMen

Related: Bernie Sanders Takes Hillary Clinton to Task on Climate Change (Policy.Mic)

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!