2020 Tied for Warmest Year

From NASA and NOAA news releases:

According to an analysis of global temperatures by NASA, earth’s average surface temperature in 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record. A separate analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded that 2020 was the second-warmest year in their record, behind 2016. Scientists from the United Kingdom Met Office ranked 2020 as the second-warmest year on record while scientists from Copernicus have 2020 tying with 2016 as the warmest year on record.

Either tied for warmest or second warmest, our planet continues it’s long-term warming trend. This year’s average planet wide temperature was 1.84 degrees Fahrenheit (1.02 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951-1980 mean temperature, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. NASA scientists had 2020 edging 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 NASA’s Goddard 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.”

NOAA scientists use much of the same raw temperature data in their analysis but use a different baseline period (1901-2000) and methodology. Unlike NASA, NOAA also does not infer temperatures in polar regions that do not have direct measurements, which accounts for much of the difference between NASA and NOAA records.

Tracking global temperature trends provides a critical indicator of the impact of human activities – specifically, greenhouse gas emissions – on our planet. Rising temperatures are causing a loss of sea ice and ice sheet mass, sea level rise, longer and more intense heat waves, and shifts in plant and animal habitats.

NOAA listed these indication of climate change:

• A total of 103 named storms occurred around the world in 2020, tying the record number seen in 2018. The North Atlantic played an unusually large role in the global activity in 2020, accounting for about 30% of the global accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) and named storms — which is more than twice its usual share.
• The 2020 annual global sea-surface temperature was the third highest on record at 1.37 degrees F (0.76 of a degree C) above the 20th-century average — only 2016 and 2019 were warmer. Record-high sea surface temperatures were observed across parts of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.
• The average annual Northern Hemisphere snow cover for 2020 was 9.31 million square miles. This was the fourth-smallest annual snow cover in the 1967–2020 record.