Next year is going to spell out a big relief from scorching temperatures. It looks like last year's government resolve to fight climate change is going to get support, according to scientists on Wednesday.
Referring to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) report, NASA chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt explained: "July 2016 was absolutely the hottest month since the instrumental records began." July 2016 was 1.51 degrees Fahrenheit (0.84 degrees Celcius) warmer than the global temperature average between 1950 and 1980.
The reason behind it is, of course, greenhouse gases and an El Nino event that stoked the Pacific. But this week, NASA said that it is most likely that 2016 will be the warmest year---much more than 2015 and 2014.
It is interesting that El Nino, which is a phenomenon that is heating the eastern Pacific and disturbs weather patterns every two-seven years, is reducing and fading.
"Next year is probably going to be cooler than 2016," said Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia. There is no strong La Nina, which is the opposite of El Nino, and which can cool down the planet.
The last known incidence of El Nino was in 1998, which got overtaken only in 2005. It actually led some people to believe that global warming is not the threat that it is made out to be.
"If 2017 is cooler, there will probably be some climate skeptics surfing on this information," said Jean-Noel Thepaut, head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
"The long-term trend is towards warming but there is natural variability so there are ups and downs. The scientific community will have again to explain what is happening," he said.
The 1998 rise in government temperatures could have led to reduced government attention to climate change, linked to increasing heat waves, floods, downpours and rising sea levels.
"One thing that the scientific community needs to be careful about is that they are not gearing up for a new 'hiatus' event," said Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate and Energy Research in Oslo.
