{"id":3581,"date":"2022-02-03T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=3581"},"modified":"2022-01-20T06:39:17","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T06:39:17","slug":"2021-was-the-sixth-hottest-year-on-record-warns-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/2021-was-the-sixth-hottest-year-on-record-warns-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"2021 Was the Sixth Hottest Year on Record, Warns Scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This becomes all the more apparent with recent findings released by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The NOAA summarize their findings in the animation above, making their warnings of an ever-warming planet more apparent. (NOAA, 2022) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Average surface temperatures for the previous year, across both the land and water readings, place it at 0.84 \u00b0C (1.51 \u00b0F) above the average global temperature for the 20th<\/sup> century\u2014a 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<\/sup> in temperature recordings makes the trend a cause for real concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Another image from the NOAA show temperature readings for 2021 across the surface of the Earth, revealing vast swaths of the surface that experienced temperatures that were \u201cmuch warmer than average.\u201d (NOAA, 2022) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

“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<\/a>. “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].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists point to an increase in the abundance of atmospheric greenhouse gases as one of the reasons behind the continuously-increasing temperature trend\u2014a fact not helped by the rising temperatures actually releasing even more of them that would have been otherwise locked beneath Siberian permafrost<\/a>, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to ScienceAlert, temperature averages may even reach 1.5 \u00b0C (34.7 \u00b0F) above the average by the 2030s\u2014a bleak thought given the general agreement that temperatures should stay below that metric to give humanity a chance to \u201cavert the worst impacts\u201d of climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(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<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n