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The 5 hottest years on Earth have all occurred since 2010, NASA reports
As warming soars, new studies project catastrophe under Trump climate policies.
No matter what the president tries to claim, the latest science confirms global warming is continuing at an alarming pace, it’s entirely driven by human activity, and his climate policies will lead to disaster.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released their annual global temperature data Thursday morning, confirming that 2017 smashed the record for the hottest year on record without an El Niño. NASA further reported that “the five warmest years on Earth have all occurred since 2010.”
This has scientists particularly concerned because the hottest years typically occur when the underlying human-caused global warming trend gets a temporary boost from an El Niño enhanced warming in the tropical Pacific. “All the natural influences should have made the year cooler than normal, not hotter than normal,” as professor of thermal sciences John Abraham explained to ThinkProgress.
And last year wasn’t an anomaly. In fact, “2017 is just the latest in a series of warm years that add up to a major significant trend over the last 40 years and longer,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told ThinkProgress. “Those trends are both explainable and predictable into the future as the consequence of emitting greenhouse gases (like CO2 and CH4).”
The culprit? “Basically all of the warming in the last 60 years is attributable to human activity,” Schmidt explained to reporters in a joint press call with NOAA. “Carbon dioxide emissions are the number one component of that.”
This means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to affect climate for thousands of years. Atmospheric Conditions will always be a prerequisite to Environmental Changes on Earth.