2016 Is the Third Hottest Year in a Row.

The Boston Globe posted a picture touting a 60-degree January day as evidence of Global Warming. But it isn't. There were January thaws with daytime temps in the 60s in the 1970s when I was growing up in greater Boston. But it's the ocean warming and polar warming that's pushing up the annual mean temperatures, year over year over year over year.

For third straight time, Earth sets hottest year record

Justin Gillis and John Schwartz of The New York Times,  January 18, 2017

Source: The Boston Globe.

Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016 — trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row. 

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The data show that politicians cannot wish the problem away. The Earth is heating up, a point long beyond serious scientific dispute, but one becoming more evident as the records keep falling. Temperatures are heading toward levels that many experts believe will pose a profound threat to both the natural world and to human civilization. 

In 2015 and 2016, the planetary warming was intensified by the weather pattern known as El Niño, in which the Pacific Ocean released a huge burst of energy and water vapor into the atmosphere. But the bigger factor in setting the records was the long-term trend of rising temperature, which scientists say is being driven by increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. 

“A single warm year is something of a curiosity,” said Deke Arndt, chief of global climate monitoring for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “It’s really the trend, and the fact that we’re punching at the ceiling every year now, that is the real indicator that we’re undergoing big changes.”

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