Earth's climate went off the rails in 2021, reports show

Andrew Freedman

Sat, January 15, 2022, 8:03 AM

Global warming became local to a new and devastating extent in 2021, with the year ranking as the sixth-warmest on record, according to new, independent data from NASA, NOAA and Berkeley Earth.

Why it matters: Each year's data adds to the relentless long-term trend, which shows rapid warming due overwhelmingly to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions during the past several decades in particular.

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• The global shifts in ocean heat, atmospheric moisture, and surface temperatures on shorter timescales are increasingly being felt in the form of unprecedented and deadly extreme weather and climate events.

The big picture: The three temperature tracking groups matched data released earlier this week by the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service, and show how the presence of a La Niña event in the tropical Pacific Ocean, which features cooler than average sea surface temperatures near the equator, failed to dislodge 2021 from the list of top 10 years.

Between the lines: The next year that features an El Niño in the tropical Pacific, which is La Niña's warmer sibling, is almost assured to set a record for the warmest year, since it can further accelerate human-caused warming.

• Last year featured a relentless series of extreme weather and climate disasters that saw temperatures and water levels reach unprecedented levels.

• A June heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, for example, set a temperature record for the hottest reading (121°F) ever seen in Canada, along with all-time highs in Oregon and Washington. The town that set the Canadian record, Lytton, British Columbia, burned in a wildfire the next day.

• A study found the heat wave could not have occurred without human-caused global warming.

• "Changes in extreme events are global warming writ local," NASA's Gavin Schmidt, who directs the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, told Axios in an email.