14 DAY TRIAL // Figures released by the Japan Meteorological Agency this past Monday indicate that the year 2014 was the absolute hottest to have ever been documented since scientists first got to work monitoring shifts in global temperatures.
Prior to this, the hottest year on record was 1988. As it turns out, man-made climate change and global warming have done a wonderful job making our planet just a wee warmer than it used to be.
Global warming in sheer numbers
In a statement detailing their findings, the Japan Meteorological Agency researchers behind this rather worrying announcement show that in 2014 the global average temperature exceeded the 20th century average by 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit (0.63 degrees Celsius).
What's more, the Japanese specialists say that, when compared to the average documented between the years 1981 and 2010, the one recorded last year was found to be about 0.51 degrees Fahrenheit (0.27 degrees Celsius) higher.
“The annual anomaly of the global average surface temperature in 2014 was +0.27 degrees Celsius above the 1981 – 2010 average (+0.63 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average), and was the warmest since 1891.”
“On a longer time scale, global average surface temperatures have risen at a rate of about 0.70 degrees Celsius [1.26 degrees Fahrenheit] per century,” researchers with the Japan Meteorological Agency explain in a statement.
In case anyone was wondering, the five absolute warmest years currently on record are 2014, 1998, 2013, 2010 and 2005. The global average temperatures documented in these years all considerably exceeded the 1981 – 2010 average.
Scientists kind of, sort of saw this coming
Truth be told, the fact that 2014 turned out to be the hottest year on record was not exactly a big surprise. On the contrary, scientists and meteorologists pretty much saw this coming.
Thus, in early December it was announced that the global average temperature documented starting the first day of January and up until October had been the greatest ever recorded for the first three quarters of the year.
Prior to this, the month of May was crowned the hottest ever since record keeping began back in 1880, and April was announced to have been one of the hottest months studied by the scientific community. Simply put, it made sense for 2014 to end up becoming the absolute warmest year ever documented.
Specialists warn that, unless global leaders get busy cutting down on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that make it into our planet's atmosphere on a yearly basis as soon as possible, the world will continue to warm to a considerable extent in the years to come.
