2016 was hot, hot, hot enough to set another record

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Earth sizzled to a third-straight record hot year in 2016, with scientists mostly blaming man-made global warming with help from a natural El Nino that’s now gone.

Two U.S. agencies and international weather groups reported Wednesday that last year was the warmest on record. They measure global temperatures in slightly different ways, and came up with a range of increases, from minuscule to what top American climate scientists described as substantial.

They’re “all singing the same song even if they are hitting different notes along the way. The pattern is very clear,” said Deke Arndt of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin-istration.

NOAA calculated that the average global temperature for 2016 was 58.69 degrees – beating the previous year by 0.07 degrees.

The figures are based on ground-level temperatures. Satellite calculations also showed that it was the warmest year, Schmidt said.