As the largest polluters in the world continue to damage the environment, we residents now feel its deleterious after-effects. One of the most noticeable effects our collective mistreatment of nature is showcasing is the steadily continuing rise of global temperatures.
This becomes all the more apparent with recent findings released by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that show the year 2021 as being the 6th warmest year on record. Additionally, with the last 9 years up till that point, 2013-2021 comprises nine of the ten hottest years on record.
Temperatures for the previous year were compared to climate data stored and obtained from all the way back to 1880, which revealed the alarming result. 2021 followed the two years before it, 2020 and 2019, that both belong on the top three warmest years on record.
Average surface temperatures for the previous year, across both the land and water readings, place it at 0.84 °C (1.51 °F) above the average global temperature for the 20th century—a period of time from 1880 to 1900 that scientists use as a temperature baseline for a pre-industrialization Earth. And while 2021 was colder on average compared to the two years before it, the fact that it still ranked 6th in temperature recordings makes the trend a cause for real concern.
“Of course, all this is driven by increasing concentrations of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide,” said NOAA senior climatologist Russell Vose to reporters and according to a report by ScienceAlert. “There’s probably a 99 percent chance that 2022 will rank in the top 10, a 50-50 chance […] it’ll rank in the top five, and a 10 percent chance it’ll rank first [in the hottest years on record].”
Scientists point to an increase in the abundance of atmospheric greenhouse gases as one of the reasons behind the continuously-increasing temperature trend—a fact not helped by the rising temperatures actually releasing even more of them that would have been otherwise locked beneath Siberian permafrost, for example.
According to ScienceAlert, temperature averages may even reach 1.5 °C (34.7 °F) above the average by the 2030s—a bleak thought given the general agreement that temperatures should stay below that metric to give humanity a chance to “avert the worst impacts” of climate change.
(For more readings on the effects of climate change, check our piece on how a warming Earth is actually impacting the surface morphology of our planet.)
References
- 2021 was world’s 6th-warmest year on record. (2022, January 13). National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. https://www.noaa.gov/news/2021-was-worlds-6th-warmest-year-on-record
- Ahmed, I. & AFP. (2022, January 13). It’s official: Last 9 years are now among 10 hottest ever recorded. ScienceAlert. https://www.sciencealert.com/2013-to-2021-all-rank-among-the-10-hottest-on-record
