Where did 2022 rank in terms of global temperature?
NASA GISS has released their global surface temperature data for 2022 and has determined that 2022 was tied with 2015 as the fifth warmest year on record despite ongoing La Niña conditions, which typically have a slight cooling effect on the global average temperature.
Image courtesy NASA GISS.
Last year averaged 0.90 degrees Celsius (1.6 deg Fahrenheit) above the 1951-1980 average, according to NASA.
The past nine years have been the warmest years on record since 1880 when record-keeping began. The top two warmest years on record are still 2020 and 2016, according to the NASA GISS database.
Image courtesy NASA GISS.
According to NASA's Gavin Schmidt, the reason for the warming trend is that human activities continue to pump enormous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, it appears that global carbon dioxide emissions were the highest on record in 2022.
In addition, new data now suggests that the Arctic is currently warming at a rate of three to four times greater than the rest of the planet.
According to the NOAA database, 2022 was the sixth warmest year on record globally. Both NOAA and NASA use the same database, but NOAA measures their temperatures against the 20th-century average, whereas NASA is measured against the 1951-1980 mean.
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