Earth sets a temperature record for 3rd straight year

For the third consecutive year, Earth’s climate was the warmest on record in 2016, according to new data released by two federal agencies.

It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row, but most people in this part of the world didn’t get a sense of that by what they experienced in their backyards

In their latest report that looks at annual temperatures across the globe, NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predictably found much of 2016’s warmth was again in Alaska, western Canada, Siberia, Greenland, and other parts of the Arctic — a trend that has been evolving over several decades.

Those areas lack population, political strength, and — with few exceptions — are visited less frequently by people who live on other parts of the planet.

The two agencies chose not to address those dynamics in their presentation, telling reporters their mission is simply to get scientific information out to the public.

The Arctic also experienced its worst year on record for loss of sea ice in 2016, and the outlook for 2017 doesn’t look good, either.

Pittsburgh experienced its second-warmest year on record.

According to a NOAA study released earlier this month, Cleveland had its warmest year on record in 2016, with its average temperature of 54.3 degrees for that year being 2.9 degrees warmer than NOAA’s 1981-2010 benchmark of 51.4 degrees.

Yet only a two-hour drive to the west, Toledo had its sixth warmest year on record, with its average 2016 temperature of 52.1

degrees being 1.8 degrees warmer than its 1981-2010 benchmark of 50.3 degrees.

Cleveland was one of 34 U.S. cities that set a new annual record for warmth in 2016.

But it was the only one in the Great Lakes region. Most were in the South, with one exception being a part of New York City. Three cities in North Dakota and four in Alaska also had record years for warmth in 2016.

Besides the Steel City, 47 other cities also experienced their second-warmest years on record, while Fort Wayne, Ind.; Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.; Akron, Ohio; Chicago; Detroit; and Grand Rapids, Mich. were among many that had their third warmest years on record.

“The trends we are seeing are continuing,” according to Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, who also predicted 2017 will almost certainly wind up in the Top Five — possibly No. 2 since recordkeeping began in 1880.

“It was really global warmth we saw in 2016, even more than 2015,” agreed Deke Arndt, chief of global monitoring for NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, in Asheville, N.C.

Mr. Schmidt said he is reluctant to predict 2017 will be a record-breaking year because it isn’t starting off with a strong El Nino weather pattern like the one that carried into 2016 after starting in the Pacific in the fall of 2015.

This year is beginning with a mild La Nina, a type of weather pattern that often — but not always — follows El Ninos.

Mr. Arndt said year-to-year differences mean little to scientists in comparison to long-term trending data, which shows Earth’s average temperature on an upward trajectory since the middle of last century.

“It’s a pretty unmistakable signal. The pattern is very clear,” Mr. Arndt said. “The fact we are seeing similar results over time builds our confidence.”

Earlier this month, NOAA confirmed in a report that 2016 was the second warmest year on record for the continental United States, a prediction it said last fall was likely to come true.

The United States also experienced its second-highest number of weather and climate disasters in 2016, from a major drought to a major wildfire to several floods and a major hurricane.

Fifteen events caused $1 billion or more in damages, for a total loss of $46 billion. They were part of more than 200 weather and climate disasters the United States has sustained since 1980, resulting in $1.1 trillion in damages, NOAA said.

At the northern reaches of the globe, scientists measured an average of 3.92 million square miles of sea ice over the course of 2016, the lowest annual average since their measurements began in 1979, NOAA said.

“What’s going on in the Arctic is really very impressive; this year was ridiculously off the chart,” said Gavin Schmidt, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, a unit of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that tracks global temperatures.

“As the [Arctic] snow and ice goes away, that feeds back into the [Earth’s] climate system,” Mr. Arndt said. “It is an important climate driver, an important driver for Earth’s systems.”

But Arctic people were hardly alone in feeling the heat. Drought and starvation afflicted Africa.

Antarctica likewise had a retreat of sea ice. There, the amount of sea ice averaged 4.31 million square miles in 2016. That was the secondlowest amount since 1979, NOAA added.

The modern era of global warming began around 1970, after a long stretch of relatively flat temperatures, and the past three years mark the first time in that period that three records were set in a row. Of the 17 hottest years on record, 16 have now occurred since 2000.

“A single warm year is something of a curiosity,” said Deke Arndt, chief of global climate monitoring for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “It’s really the trend, and the fact that we’re punching at the ceiling every year now, that is the real indicator that we’re undergoing big changes.”