For the second year in a row, Earth will almost certainly be the hottest it's ever been. And for the first time, the globe this year reached more than 1.5 degrees Celsius 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit of warming compared to the pre-industrial average, the European climate agency Copernicus said Thursday.
"It's this relentless nature of the warming that I think is is worrying," said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus.
Buontempo said the data clearly shows the planet would not see such a long sequence of record-breaking temperatures without the constant increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere driving global warming.
He cited other factors that contribute to exceptionally warm years like last year and this one. They include El Nino - the temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide - as well as volcanic eruptions that spew water vapor into the air and variations in energy from the sun. But he and other scientists say the long-term increase in temperatures beyond fluctuations like El Nino is a bad sign.
"A very strong El Nino event is a sneak peek into what the new normal will be about a decade from now," said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist with the nonprofit Berkeley Earth.
