— Brian L Kahn (@blkahn) January 16, 2015
"Humans are literally cooking their planet," said Jonathan Overpeck, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Arizona.
2014’s global temperature broke records that meteorologists began keeping dating back to 1880.
The statistics from NASA and NOAA, confirmed what the Japanese Meteorological Agency stated, 2014 was the planet's warmest.
NOAA explained that the average temperature was 58.24 degrees, which was 1.24 degrees higher than the 20th century average.
"The year 2014 was the warmest year across global land and ocean surfaces since records began in 1880. The annually-averaged temperature was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F), easily breaking the previous records of 2005 and 2010 by 0.04°C (0.07°F). This also marks the 38th consecutive year (since 1977) that the yearly global temperature was above average. Including 2014, 9 of the 10 warmest years in the 135-year period of record have occurred in the 21st century. 1998 currently ranks as the fourth warmest year on record." said NOAA
"It just shows that human emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, are taking over the Earth's climate system," Overpeck said. "The data are clear: The Earth is warming, and humans are causing the bulk of this warming."
"The planet has not seen a month with below-average temperatures since February 1985," said Radley Horton, a scientist from Columbia University.
"What we have known for decades is that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations — due to human activities — have stacked the deck dramatically towards more record warm years and fewer record cold years," Horton said.
The effects of global warming are beginning to show on the planet as well. Sea levels are rising, the arctic regions are beginning to melt, more flooding around the world, and of course long heatwaves.
Scientists say the report serves as a grim reminder to the world’s inhabitants that global warming is very real and very dangerous.
