NASA and the National Oceanic Administration (NOAA) confirmed today (January 13 local time) that the past eight years have been the warmest on record.2021 is the sixth-warmest year on record, the two agencies said, as global average temperatures trend higher. Rankings aside, there are plenty of red flags throughout 2021 that show us just how significant the year’s temperature extremes are.
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“The truth is, we’re kind of entering a new regime now…it’s probably the warmest decade in many, many years, maybe 1,000 years,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. There’s enough change that it’s having an impact locally.”
In North America, these local effects include epic scorching heat, even for typically cooler regions. In late June and early July, the U.S. Pacific Northwest and western Canada struggled with record temperatures, where roads were crushed and power lines melted. In the desert farther south, California’s Death Valley reached a scorching 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4 degrees Celsius) in July, potentially breaking the world record for the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth — for the second year in a row.
Across the Atlantic, Europe also experienced sweltering weather. A reading of 119.8 degrees Fahrenheit (48.8 degrees Celsius) in Sicily may have broken Europe’s record for the highest temperature. (The World Meteorological Organization is still working to review these records). Overall, July 2021 was the warmest month on record for mankind, according to NOAA.
More than just discomfort, the heat took a toll on the community. The CDC reports a surge in emergency department visits in the Pacific Northwest due to extreme heatwaves. Further north, the small town of Leyton, British Columbia, was nearly destroyed by a hellfire shortly after it recorded its highest temperature ever recorded in Canada. The incident is one of the most shocking for Schmidt in 2021. “The scale of the human tragedy out there, you know, even if people don’t die, that’s a community destroyed,” Schmidt said.
Heat trapped in the world‘s oceans is also reaching record levels in 2021, according to research published this week. Marine heatwaves may now be twice as large as they were in the early 1980s, and they can be devastating to marine life and coastal communities. They kill corals, cause losses to fisheries and crabbing, and even worsen droughts on the shore.
If it weren’t for a La Niña event, 2021 could have been hotter. La Niña is a recurring climate phenomenon defined by cooler than average waters in the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean, which has predictable effects on weather patterns around the world.
Earlier this week, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service released its own global temperature records, which differ slightly from those of NASA and NOAA because they use somewhat different methods to do so. calculate. Copernicus determined 2021 to be the fifth warmest year on record. It also confirmed that the world has warmed by more than one degree Celsius since the pre-industrial era, a result of the greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels. Experts are urging a transition to clean energy as global warming needs to be kept well below two degrees Celsius to prevent catastrophic climate change.
“Unfortunately, we’re reaping what we planted,” Schmidt said.
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