Post date: Oct 22, 2015 3:27:24 PM

2015 could be warmest year on record

Last month was the hottest September worldwide, and 2015 is now virtually guaranteed to be the hottest year in recorded history. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the first nine months of this year have been the hottest such period ever recorded. Driven by warmer temperatures, the strongest El Niño on record is fueling extreme weather, from typhoons in the Philippines to historic summer rains and a looming winter drought in Hawaii. This all comes as negotiators prepare for the U.N. climate summit in Paris November 30.

NOAA points to greenhouse gases, effects of El Nino

By Justin Gillis NEW YORK TIMES OCTOBER 22, 2015

Just one year after 2014 set a record as the hottest year in the historical record, 2015 is on track to beat it by a large margin, possibly signaling a return to a sustained period of rapid global warming.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency that tracks worldwide temperatures, reported Wednesday that last month had been the hottest September on record and that the January-to-September period was the hottest since 1880. Scientists say the mathematical odds are now overwhelming that the full year will be the hottest ever recorded.

The immediate cause is a strong El Niño weather pattern, in which the ocean releases immense amounts of heat into the atmosphere. But temperatures this year are running far ahead of those during the last strong El Niño, in 1997 and 1998, and scientists said that would likely not have happened without an underlying trend of warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

The El Niño phenomenon and the accompanying heat are already roiling weather patterns worldwide, likely contributing to dry weather and forest fires in Indonesia, to drought in Ethiopia, and to a developing food emergency across swaths of Africa.

Those effects are likely to intensify in coming months, with the potential for heavy storms, mudslides, and floods in California, drought in Australia and in parts of Brazil, and many other weather-related disasters.

Earlier this year, the global warmth contributed to a spring heat wave in India and Pakistan that killed thousands, with temperatures hitting 118 degrees in parts of India.

Forecasters have been issuing warnings about a strong El Niño for months. The coming few months will thus test whether governments, and the global relief agencies that support poor countries, have done a competent job of preparing, particularly to provide food relief for hard-hit regions.

“The warning is out,” said Richard Seager, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, in New York. “The world has had time to plan for this.”