GHG Daily
1/27/2016
Thirteen of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred in the 21st century. The idea that such a situation might have happened naturally is extremely small, according to a scientific report published Monday in the journal Nature. “Natural climate variations just can’t explain the observed recent global heat records, but man-made global warming can,” co-author Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said in an institute press release.
The report looks at temperature data through 2014 and thus does not include 2015, which NASA recently announced as the new hottest year on record. “In summary, our results suggest that the recent record temperature years are roughly 600 to 130,000 times more likely to have occurred under conditions of anthropogenic than in its absence. Our findings thus underscore the profound impact that anthropogenic forcing has already had on temperature extremes,” the report says.
