Earth just experienced its second hottest year on record, according to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The agencies announced Wednesday global surface temperatures in 2019 were the second warmest since modern record-keeping began in 1880.
Last year, temperatures were 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (0.98 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
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“The decade that just ended is clearly the warmest decade on record,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. “Every decade since the 1960s clearly has been warmer than the one before.”
Globally, 2019 temperatures were second only to those of 2016 and continued the planet's long-term warming trend: the past five years have been the warmest of the last 140 years.
Since the 1880s, the agencies said the average global surface temperature has risen and the average temperature is now more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (just above 1 degree Celsius) above that of the late 19th century.
For reference, the last Ice Age was about 10 degrees Fahrenheit colder than pre-industrial temperatures.
Using climate models and statistical analysis of global temperature data, scientists said the increase mostly has been driven by increased emissions into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by humans.
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“We crossed over into more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit warming territory in 2015 and we are unlikely to go back,” Schmidt said. “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.”
NOAA found the 2019 annual mean temperature for the contiguous 48 United States was the 34th warmest on record, giving it a “warmer than average” classification. The Arctic region has warmed slightly more than three times faster than the rest of the world since 1970.
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Rising temperatures in the atmosphere and ocean are contributing to the continued mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica and to increases in some extreme events, such as heat waves, wildfires, intense precipitation, the organizations said.
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