2017 WAS the hottest on record

2017 was hottest year on record

Arctic News,

22 January, 2018

The year 2017 was the hottest year on record, as the image below illustrates.

When determining which year was the hottest year, care should be taken to avoid bias due to temporary conditions such as the El Niño that was present in 2016 and the La Niña we're now experiencing now. Above image uses NASA land+ocean January 2012-December 2017 anomalies from 1951-1980, adjusted by 0.59°C to cater for the rise from preindustrial to 1951-1980, to calculate a linear trend that goes some way to smooth out variability due to El Niño/La Niña events. The trend shows that 2017 was significantly warmer than 2016.

The trend also shows that 1.5°C above preindustrial was crossed back in 2016. This 1.5°C (or 2.7°F) was set at the Paris Agreement as a guardrail that was not to be crossed. The trend further shows that we've meanwhile crossed 1.6°C above preindustrial and we look set to cross the 2°C guardrail within years.

Temperatures in the Arctic are rising two-to-three-times faster than they are globally, and the difference is accelerating.

This accelerating Arctic warming comes with the unacceptable danger that feedbacks will speed up, such as:

• huge amounts of methane getting released from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean;
• melting of sea ice and permafrost causing more sunlight to get absorbed in the Arctic, as less sunlight gets reflected back into space;
• changes to jet streams causing more extreme weather, in turn resulting in more emissions, such as due to wildfires;
• and more.

[ Danger Assessment, from earlier post ]

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action as described in the Climate Plan.

Links

• Climate Planhttps://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html

• Warming is acceleratinghttps://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/11/warming-is-accelerating.html

• The Arctic is changing the Jet Stream - Why This Is Importanthttps://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-arctic-is-changing-the-jet-stream-why-this-is-important.html

• 10°C or 18°F warmer by 2021?https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/04/10c-or-18f-warmer-by-2021.html

• Abrupt Warming - How Much And How Fast?https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/05/abrupt-warming-how-much-and-how-fast.html

• Feedbackshttps://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/feedbacks.html

• Extinctionhttps://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html

• Methane Erupting From Arctic Ocean Seafloorhttps://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/03/methane-erupting-from-arctic-ocean-seafloor.html

• Warning of mass extinction of species, including humans, within one decadehttps://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2017/02/warning-of-mass-extinction-of-species-including-humans-within-one-decade.html