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2020 Tied for Warmest Year on Record, NASA Analysis Shows:
Continuing the planet's long-term warming trend, the year's globally averaged temperature was 1.84 degrees Fahrenheit (1.02 degrees Celsius) warmer than the baseline 1951-1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. 2020 edged out 2016 by a very small amount, within the margin of error of the analysis, making the years effectively tied for the warmest year on record.
"The last seven years have been the warmest seven years on record, typifying the ongoing and dramatic warming trend," said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. "Whether one year is a record or not is not really that important – the important things are long-term trends. With these trends, and as the human impact on the climate increases, we have to expect that records will continue to be broken."
[...] A separate, independent analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded that 2020 was the second-warmest year in their record, behind 2016. NOAA scientists use much of the same raw temperature data in their analysis, but have a different baseline period (1901-2000) and methodology. Unlike NASA, NOAA also does not infer temperatures in polar regions lacking observations, which accounts for much of the difference between NASA and NOAA records.
Like all scientific data, these temperature findings contain a small amount of uncertainty – in this case, mainly due to changes in weather station locations and temperature measurement methods over time. The GISS temperature analysis (GISTEMP) is accurate to within 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit with a 95 percent confidence level for the most recent period.
[...] In the long term, parts of the globe are also warming faster than others. Earth's warming trends are most pronounced in the Arctic, which the GISTEMP analysis shows is warming more than three times as fast as the rest of the globe over the past 30 years, according to Schmidt. The loss of Arctic sea ice – whose annual minimum area is declining by about 13 percent per decade – makes the region less reflective, meaning more sunlight is absorbed by the oceans and temperatures rise further still. This phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, is driving further sea ice loss, ice sheet melt and sea level rise, more intense Arctic fire seasons, and permafrost melt.
[...] NASA's full surface temperature data set – and the complete methodology used to make the temperature calculation – are available at:
The report acknowledged the effects of the fires in Australia and of the ENSO (El Nino-Southern Oscillation).
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @04:03PM (15 children)
If CO2 and methane and all the other greenhouse gasses are to blame for global warming, then we truly can't stop it.
Short of annihilating civilization and going back to the Bronze Age, it cannot be stopped. Sorry for the hard truth.
(Score: 1, Troll) by BsAtHome on Friday January 22 2021, @04:36PM (3 children)
Bronze age is too late. That period is already known for deforestation at very large scale with just a fraction of the current population. Imaging what happens when you scale the bronze age energy requirements by current population numbers. Not gonna work. So, back to the stone age and a reduction in population by, oh, 99.9%.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @04:44PM (2 children)
How about this for a compromise, then?
A large chunk of the population can take jetplane flights to far off countries to see the world and eat food trucked to their house that is out of season but flown in from the other hemisphere, and then they can complain about other people who aren't doing anything about global warming.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @07:03PM (1 child)
A large chunk of the population are private jet owners. Imagine that.
All us peons are under lockdowns going on a year and with no end in sight, if you hadn't noticed.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @07:13PM
I most definitely noticed. I noticed the hypocrisy going back to "An Inconvenient Truth" Al Gore and his jetsetting all over the world and his gigantic mansion/compound while he lectured the peons and applauding idiots about how we were going to have to live like peasants to save Mother Earth.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @04:41PM
CO2 levels and temperatures were both dramatically higher when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Even if we burned every single remaining ounce of fossil fuels we're not entering into dangerous or even uncharted territory. Granted, life would like a lot different. For instance there'd probably be a whole lot more water and greenery. In my opinion there's two components to the freakout:
1) It will damage coastal cities which are generally built very near sea level. More inland development is an important step to prepare to the future.
2) Publish or perish. Researchers need to publish articles and there's just never-ending bait here. This, in turn, feeds the click-bait army of the media. The only people that lose are society who end being freaked out over something not especially worrying.
The great climate catastrophe will likely end up just about like the great COVID catastrophe. Here [macrotrends.net] is a graph of the annual death toll in the USA. Can you spot the world ending plague used to justify destroy economies worldwide alongside mass suspension of civil liberties? Yeah, neither can I. The death toll did not meaningfully change. The freak out was 90% driven by governments and media, and 10% of actual facts. For those that don't know, the death rate of COVID for those under the age of 65 is well below 1%. Now continue to be scared and give away all your rights, please. Because the sociopathic politicians seizing power on an unprecedented level are just doing so because they care about you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @04:42PM (2 children)
Geoengineer the problem. Orbital mirrors or stratospheric sulfur injection, your choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @04:46PM (1 child)
Sulfur injection would definitely cause worldwide acid rain.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @04:54PM
Orbital bombardment it is then.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @04:54PM (6 children)
You're a dumbfuck troll who has nothing useful to contribute to the discussion. Sorry for the hard truth.
As we've observed in the prehistoric past, rapidly increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere is quite deadly. That's exactly what happened during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. Because solar output has increased over time, the same greenhouse gas concentrations in the present day would result in an even hotter Earth.
Your comment is a false dichotomy, stating that decreasing greenhouse gas emissions would require destroying civilization as we know it. Because we have already made progress toward reducing emissions and more innovation is on the way, it most certainly appears that mitigation is a very viable option.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @05:13PM (4 children)
I'm not sure what you're trying to suggest happened during the permian-triassic extinction event, but it seems likely to be incorrect.
I assume you're hitting on the volcanic hypothesis (and hypothesis there is - there are many possible explanations with no clear 'winner'). But that would have resulted in the exact opposite of mass heating during the period of the extinction. The idea there is that the volcanics sent a spew of ash and particles into the atmosphere. These particles then effectively block out sunlight which would result in a massive cooling as well the destruction of all plant life due to a lack of sunlight. The increase in CO2 may have yielded an increase in global warming over a period of centuries to millennia, but over a period of weeks stuff would be freezing to death - so that's a bit more relevant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @06:27PM (3 children)
Ah yes, the science distraction
"Your comment is a false dichotomy, stating that decreasing greenhouse gas emissions would require destroying civilization as we know it."
You're a troll either shilling or going for keklulz, possibly an idiot with just enough education to be epically stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @07:15PM
When they gave you the script, they had not supposed you would quote from it verbatim, you idiot!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @07:15PM (1 child)
You haven't done the math to see what it would take to stop global warming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @07:17PM
Parent comment was aimed at commenter who said, "Your comment is a false dichotomy..."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @07:08PM
Shut up Noah.
Are you ignorant, or are you lying?
In the case of the former, educate yourself a bit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event#Theories_about_cause [wikipedia.org]
In the case of the latter, go find a better lie.