Jan 13,2023:In what has become a grim annual tradition, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that 2022 was one of the warmest years in modern recorded history.
According to NOAA’s measurements of global temperature data, 2022 ranked as the planet’s sixth-warmest year on record. By NASA’s slightly different accounting it tied for the fifth-hottest year, sharing that “alarming distinction” with 2015, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said.
“That’s pretty alarming,” Nelson said. “And that’s a trend that is growing in magnitude.”
The data for 2022 confirm that nine of the last 10 years have been the warmest since 1880, when the government began keeping records. This was despite the ongoing La Niña event, which typically has a cooling effect on the globe.
Without La Niña’s cooling influence, 2022 would have been the second-warmest year on record, said NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt.
NOAA said the planet’s average global temperature last year was just 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.02 degrees Celsius) higher than the year before. But it was more than 1.5 degrees F (nearly 0.9 degrees C) warmer than the average for the entire 20th century.
NOAA doesn’t include Antarctica and the Arctic in its calculations. If it did, it would have agreed with NASA that 2022 qualified as the fifth-warmest year, NOAA said.
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