The year 2020 has been officially declared as one of the hottest years on record, sharing the top spot with 2016. This finding by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) underscores the ongoing trend of rising global temperatures, a clear indication of climate change and its profound impact on the planet.
Record-Setting Global Temperatures
NASA’s analysis revealed that the globally averaged temperature for 2020 was 1.02 degrees Celsius (1.84 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the baseline average from 1951-1980. This significant increase in temperature has been attributed to human-induced climate change, which has led to extreme weather events such as droughts, intense wildfires, deadly heatwaves, and other environmental disasters witnessed across the globe in 2020.
The year’s high temperatures were particularly notable given that they occurred despite the presence of La Nina, a climate phenomenon characterized by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean, which typically has a cooling effect on global temperatures.
Comparative Analysis by Different Organizations
Different organizations have conducted their own analyses of global temperatures, with slight variations based on their respective baselines. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), for instance, using a baseline period of 1901-2000, concluded that 2020 was the second-warmest year on record, trailing just behind 2016.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), another authoritative source on global climate data, aligns with the assessment that 2020 was among the three warmest years on record since 2015. According to the WMO, the years 2016, 2019, and 2020 constitute the top three warmest years within this period. Moreover, the WMO has designated the decade from 2011 to 2020 as the warmest decade ever recorded, with an average global temperature of around 14.9 degrees Celsius.
The WMO is a specialized agency of the United Nations, established in 1950, and it operates out of its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Its findings and declarations carry significant weight in the scientific community and play a crucial role in shaping international climate policy.
Understanding La Nina
La Nina is a natural climate pattern that occurs in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean and is marked by colder-than-normal ocean temperatures in the region. It is part of a larger oscillation known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which also includes El Nino, the warm phase of the cycle. La Nina events tend to exert a cooling influence on global temperatures, but even this did not prevent 2020 from being one of the warmest years on record.
El Nino and La Nina events are significant because they can influence weather patterns across the globe, affecting precipitation, storms, and temperature distributions. The occurrence of La Nina in the latter half of 2020 serves to highlight the extent to which human activities have warmed the planet, as the expected cooling effect was overridden by the persistent rise in global temperatures.
In summary, the data from NASA, NOAA, and WMO collectively paint a picture of a warming world, with 2020 serving as a stark reminder of the ongoing challenges posed by climate change. Despite natural variations such as La Nina, the trend of increasing global temperatures continues unabated, prompting calls for urgent action to mitigate the effects of climate change and prevent further environmental catastrophes.