14 DAY TRIAL // Figures released by NASA (the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) this past Sunday indicate that this year's September was the hottest to have ever been documented since record keeping began back in 1880.
If you're thinking that you read a strikingly similar piece of news not too long ago, that's because you did. Thus, it was in September that NOAA (the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) released an equally worrying report.
Long story short, NOAA's paper crowned August 2014 the hottest ever documented. That's right, our planet can now take pride in having experienced two record-breaking months in a row.
NASA's report on the month of September
According to scientists working with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the global average surface temperature recorded in September 2014 exceeded the 1951-1980 average by 0.77 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit).
As mentioned, this makes this year's September the hottest to have until now been documented on a global scale. In case anyone was wondering, the previous record was held by September 2005.
Based on global temperatures recorded since the beginning of the year until now, 2014 is argued to be the third warmest year on record. Specialists warn that, should this warming trend continue, 2014 could become the hottest year ever reported.
Apparently, all that is needed for 2014 to snag this title is for the remaining months of the year to rank among the five warmest thus far documented, explains researcher Jake Crouch with the NCDC (the US National Climatic Data Center).
“If we continue a consistent departure from average for the rest of 2014, we will edge out 2010 as the warmest year on record,” the NCDC specialist commented on these latest NASA global temperature figures, as cited by Live Science.
NOAA's report on the month of August
For those who missed this particular piece of news, here's what NOAA's last month report had to say about the state of the planet: in August, the combined average temperature for both sea and ocean surfaces exceeded the 20th century average by 0.75 degrees Celsius (1.35 degrees Fahrenheit).
Global land temperature was found to have increased by 0.99 degrees Celsius (1.78 degrees Fahrenheit), whereas the global ocean temperature was documented to have been 0.65 degrees Celsius (1.17 degrees Fahrenheit) greater than the 20th century average.
What does it all mean?
I hate to break it to you, but these NASA and NOAA figures indicate that, contrary to what some people think, global warming and climate change are not scary bedtime stories but real phenomena that are transforming the world as we know it.
Admittedly, our planet is no stranger to shifts in climate and local temperatures. Such phenomena have many times happened over the millennia, and will undoubtedly happen again in the future. The thing is that this increase in global temperatures that we are experiencing in this day and age is man-made.
Simply put, it's extreme pollution caused by our love for fossil fuels that has altered the makeup of our planet's atmosphere and that need be blamed for the fact that agencies like NASA and NOAA are now announcing new temperature records way more often than we would want them to.