2014 is marked by record-breaking climate records with scientists anticipating that this year is to become the hottest year in more than a hundred years.
On Thursday, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed that 2014 is on its way to becoming the Earth's hottest year since 1880.
"It's becoming pretty clear that 2014 will end up the warmest year on record," said National Climate Data Center climate monitoring branch chief Deke Arndt. "The remaining question is, by how much."
Latest data released by NOAA's Data Center shows that last month was the warmest October since climate record keeping began. With the combined land and sea temperatures yielding an average of 58.43 F, the average worldwide temperature for October this year topped that of October 2003, which previously held the warmest record, by 0.02 F.
"With records dating back to 1880, the global temperature averaged across the world's land and ocean surfaces for October 2014 was the highest on record for the month, at 0.74°C (1.33°F) above the 20th century average," NOAA said. "This also marks the third consecutive month and fifth of the past six with a record high global temperature for its respective month (July was fourth highest)."
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Japan Meteorological Agency, which also monitor global temperatures, have also released information that October 2014 is the hottest on record.
It isn't also just October of this year. Six other months of 2014 also had record-breaking temperatures. April, May, June, August and September were the warmest on record and July is fourth hottest. NOAA said that the period between November last year and November 2014 is already the hottest 12-month stretch on record for a 12-month period since 1880.
Given that 2014 only has two more months left, climate scientists anticipate that this year will be the hottest in historical record. With the world's average temperature at 58.62 F, the planet would have to go through a cold snap this November and December so this year won't make it as the warmest years on record. Unfortunately, given the trend in the last few months, this won't likely happen.
Arndt said that this year's heat is something that scientists actually expect as a result of man-made global warming, which is being blamed on the excessive emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere particularly due to the burning of fossil fuels.
