Three years running, Earth breaks heat record

In a powerful testament to the warming of the planet, two leading U.S. science agencies Wednesday jointly declared 2016 the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record set just last year - which itself topped a record set in 2014.

Average surface temperatures in 2016, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than in 2015.

Eight successive months of 2016 - January through August - individually were the warmest since the agency started keeping records in 1880.

The average temperature across the world's land and ocean surfaces was 58.69, or 1.69 degrees above the 20th century average of 57, NOAA declared. The agency also noted that the record for the global temperature now has been broken five times since the 2000. The years 2005 and 2010 also were also record warm years, according to the agency's data.

NASA concurred with NOAA, also declaring 2016 the warmest year on record in its own data that tracks the temperatures at the surface of the planet's land and oceans, and expressing 'greater than 95 percent certainty” in that conclusion.

Last year 'is remarkably the third record year in a row in this series,” said Gavin Schmidt, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in a statement. 'We don't expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear.”

The record comes just two days before Donald Trump, who has tweeted that global warming is a 'hoax,” assumes the presidency and with it control over the two science agencies that announced the records.

Scientists have been far less skeptical.

'Climate change is real, it is caused by humans, and it is serious,” said Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona.

NASA and NOAA produce slightly different records using somewhat different methodologies, but have now concurred on identifying 2014, 2015 and 2016 as, successively, the three warmest years in their records.

Last year's warmth was partly enhanced by a strong weather pattern known as El Nino, but scientists underscore that this is not the only cause. For example, 1998 also was, at the time, the warmest year on record thanks in part to a strong El Nino - but the 2016 planetary temperature now far surpasses that year. The reason is that the Earth has been warming since then, allowing another El Nino event, unlocking heat from the Pacific Ocean to push overall temperatures to new heights.

At present, while scientists would expect 2017 to be quite warm relative to, say, a year in the 1990s, there has been little talk of a fourth record year in a row. Indeed, El Nino has subsided.

Two other global agencies, the Japan Meteorological Agency and the U.K.'s Hadley Center, also track global temperatures and may soon also declare records.

Based on an analysis of the Hadley Center's data through November shared with the Post, Michael Schlesinger, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois, also found that 2016 ranked as the hottest year. That data set dates back still farther, to 1850.

NASA noted that compared with the late 19th century, the planet now has warmed by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit, or by 1.1 degrees Celsius.

'It is the second year in a row that the annual global temperature has been more than 1 Celsius degree warmer than the preindustrial level, and shows that the world is moving ever closer to the warming threshold of 1.5 Celsius degrees, beyond which many scientists have concluded the impacts of climate change will be unacceptably dangerous,” said Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, part of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Last year's warmth was manifested across the planet, from the warm tropical ocean waters off northeastern Australia, where the Great Barrier Reef experienced its worst coral bleaching event on record, to the Arctic, where sea ice hit regular monthly record lows and overall temperatures from January through September 2016. were the warmest on record.

Extreme high temperatures were seen from India - where the city of Phalodi recorded temperatures of 123.8 degrees Fahrenheit in May - to Iran, 127.4 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded in Delhoran in July.

For the contiguous Unites States, 2016 actually was the second warmest year on record.