“We don’t expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear.”

The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere. The agency based its findings on data from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre, and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. Temperatures on Earth were the warmest in 2016 since modern record-keeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, boosting the argument shared by many climate scientists that our planet is changing in significant ways. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The year 2016 has been confirmed as the hottest year on record, surpassing the exceptionally high temperatures of 2015, according to a consolidated analysis by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). “The temperature for last year was very close to the year before, temperatures for 2016 exceeding those for 2015 by a small margin.”

Regardless of the small margins, when the new data on 2016 is included, 15 of the warmest 16 years on record have now occurred since 2001. Average surface temperatures over land and the oceans in 2016 were 0.94 degrees above the 20th-century average of 13.9 degrees, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Global temperatures rose to the hottest level on record for 2016 for a third successive record according to NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.