Hot in here! Record highs make it hard for folk to deny global warming
Wonder why the weather is so crazy? Mother Nature has less to do with it than you think
2018 set the record as the Earth’s fourth highest surface temperature in the almost 140 years of recording these metrics. NASA scientists from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies stated on Wednesday that 2018 was one of the five warmest years in recorded history.
So far, in 2019, we have experienced record-breaking and blisteringly cold weather across the country. Such cold weather has made it really hard for many to believe that global warming is real. Deathly record lows are real in the USA, but don’t be fooled by the cooling that we have been witnessing, global warming is real also. 2018 proved that by setting the record as the Earth’s fourth highest surface temperature in the almost 140 years of recording these metrics.
The New York Times reports that NASA scientists from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies revealed on Wednesday that 2018 was one of the five warmest years in recorded history.
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Sadly, the increasingly warm temperatures are being caused by human activity due to the growing numbers of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.
Last year, the Earth was more than one degree Celsius higher (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) than the average temperature of the latter part of the 19th century. During that time, humans began emitting huge portions of carbon dioxide in the air.
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In order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, global temperatures can not exceed more than two degrees Celsius. Even an increase in 1.5 could be a great risk to the stability of the world.
“We’re no longer talking about a situation where global warming is something in the future,” said Gavin A. Schmidt, who is the director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “It’s here. It’s now.”
According to Schmidt, proof of this warming trend can be seen right here in the United States with flooding in and disastrous hurricanes like Matthew and Florence. It is also linked the extremely cold temperatures the Midwest and Northeast experiences last week.
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The temperature is affecting other parts of the world such as the heatwaves occurring in Australia and the melting of Arctic ice and glaciers.
Scientists say if people across the world can make the effort to reduce greenhouse gases, the sudden in increase could be slowed down or even reversed.
Results of the year’s global temperature ranking are normally announced in January, but due to the effects of the government shutdown, federal scientists research for the analysis were postponed.
