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A12 TECHNOLOGY
Friday 14 January 2022

Associated Press

The heat stays on: Earth hits 6th

warmest year on record

By SETH BORENSTEIN of the central Pacific that because of us. And it's not
AP Science Writer changes weather patterns going to go away until we
Earth simmered to the sixth globally and brings chilly stop increasing the amount
hottest year on record in deep ocean water to the of carbon dioxide in the at-
2021, according to several surface dampened global mosphere."
newly released tempera- temperatures just as its flip The last eight years have
ture measurements. side, El Nino, boosted them been the eight hottest on
And scientists say the ex- in 2016. record, NASA and NOAA
ceptionally hot year is part Still, they said 2021 was the data agree. Global tem-
of a long-term warming hottest La Nina year on re- peratures, averaged over
trend that shows hints of cord and that the year did a 10-year period to take
accelerating. not represent a cooling off out natural variability, are

Two U.S. science agencies of human-caused climate nearly 2 degrees (1.1 de-
NASA and the National change but provided more grees Celsius) warmer than
Oceanic and Atmospheric of the same heat. 140 years ago, their data
Administration and a pri- "So it's not quite as head- shows.
vate measuring group re- line-dominating as being The other 2021 measure-
leased their calculations the warmest on record, but ments came from the
for last year's global tem- give it another few years Japanese Meteorological
perature on Thursday, and and we'll see another one Agency and satellite mea-
all said it wasn't far behind of those" records, said cli- surements by Copernicus
ultra-hot 2016 and 2020. mate scientist Zeke Haus- Climate Change Service i
Six different calculations father of the Berkeley Earth n Europe and the University
found 2021 was between monitoring group that also of Alabama in Huntsville.
the fifth and seventh hot- ranked 2021 the sixth hot- There was such a distinc-
test year since the late test. "It's the long-term tive jump in temperatures
1800s. NASA said 2021 tied trend, and it's an indomi- about eight to 10 years ago
with 2018 for sixth warm- table march upward." that scientists have started
est, while NOAA puts last Gavin Schmidt, the cli- looking at whether the rise
year in sixth place by itself, mate scientist who heads in temperatures is speed-
ahead of 2018. NASA's temperature team, ing up. Both Schmidt and

Scientists say a La Nina said "the long-term trend Hausfather said early signs
natural cooling of parts is very, very clear. And it's point to that but it's hard to
know for sure.
"I think you can see the
acceleration, but whether
it's statistically robust is not
quite clear," Schmidt said in
an interview. "If you just look
at the last the last 10 years,
how many of them are way
above the trend line from
the previous 10 years? Al-
most all of them."q