2014 – the warmest year on record

Thermometer2A summary of global temperature for 2014 from NASA and NOAA has just been published, showing that the average global temperature for 2014 was 0.69°C above the average for the 20th century. The small margin of uncertainty in calculating average global temperature means that the exact ranking of 2014 cannot be distinguished from the previous record years of 2005 and 2010, but it is nominally the warmest year on record. The ten warmest years have all occurred since 1998.

Professor Jo Haigh, Co-Director of the Grantham Institute, commented on the report saying that: “This and other indicators are all pointing in the same direction of continued global warming, reflecting the overall upward trend in average global temperatures”

A large amount of warming was seen in the oceans with globally-averaged sea surface temperature 0.57°C above the 20th century average. This is consistent with recent studies that have suggested that much of the extra energy in the Earth system is going in to the oceans. You can read more about the significance of ocean heat uptake in our blog post.

An update from the Met Office on global temperatures is expected later this month and we look forward to seeing the further detail that this will add.

See the full report on the NOAA website.

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