A new study titled “The Likelihood of Recent Record Warmth” published in the journal Scientific Reports found that recent record-breaking global warming was unlikely to happen without the help of anthropogenic climate warming. The study also indicates that the years of consistent record-breaking warmth are not independent of each other, that is, the warmer temperatures of a previous years affect the following years.
The Washington Post pointed out that 2015, according to The National Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA), was the hottest year in the 136 years of temperature record keeping. The reason the study was undertaken was that the new media had previously reported that the reason for 2014 being a record breaking year for temperature was not due to human-caused climate warming. The Washington Post explained the circulated statistic was one in 650 million.
According to the study’s findings, the odds are one-in-a-million that the record-breaking global warmth happened due to Earth’s natural climate fluctuation. Study co-author Stefan Rahmstorf was quoted by Live Science as having said that the “risk of heat extremes has been multiplied due to human greenhouse-gas emissions…” Live Science‘s coverage of the study noted some of the negative impacts of the recent warming including wildfires, drought and damaged ecosystems.
The new study shows that the record-breaking climate warming in the Northern Hemisphere, as well as the rest of the world, is due to human-caused climate warming.
The study was conducted through the use of temperature data and climate models. The models simulated what temperatures would actually be due to human-caused climate warming and what temperatures would look like in its absence. The new study shows that the record-breaking climate warming in the Northern Hemisphere, as well as the rest of the world, is due to human-caused climate warming, or rather that the recent record-breaking warmth could not have happened without human help.
