OSLO: World temperatures hit a record high for the third year in a row last year, creeping closer to a ceiling set for global warming with extremes including unprecedented heat in India and ice melt in the Arctic, US government agencies said on Wednesday.

The data, supported by findings from other organisations, was issued two days before the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, who questions whether climate change has a human cause.

Average surface temperatures over land and the oceans were 0.94 degrees Celsius above the 20th-century average of 13.9C last year, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The US space agency, NASA, reported almost identical data, and the UK Met Office and University of East Anglia, which also track global temperatures for the United Nations, said 2016 was the hottest year on record.

Temperatures, lifted both by man-made greenhouse gases and a natural El Nino event that released heat from the Pacific Ocean last year, beat the previous record in 2015, when 200 nations agreed a plan to limit global warming. That peak had in turn eclipsed 2014.

“We don’t expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Piers Forster, climate expert at the University of Leeds, said this year was likely to be cooler. “However, unless we have a major volcanic eruption, I expect the record to be broken again within a few years,” he said. Ash from big eruptions can dim sunlight.

Natural disasters

Among last year’s extreme weather events, wildfires in Alberta were the costliest natural disaster in Canada’s history while Phalodi, in western India, recorded a temperature of 51C on May 19, a national record.

North America also had its warmest year on record, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia suffered severe damage from rising temperatures, and sea ice in both the Arctic Ocean and around Antarctica is at record lows for mid-January.

“Long-term indicators of human-caused climate change reached new heights in 2016,” Petteri Taalaas, head of the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation, said, referring to rising levels of carbon dioxide and methane.

Donald Trump, who has described climate change as a hoax, has threatened to cancel the Paris Agreement and shift to exploiting cheap domestic coal, oil and gas. At a meeting in Marrakesh days after Trump’s victory, however, almost 200 nations said it was an “urgent duty” to combat climate change.

“The hottest year on record is such a clear warning siren that even president-elect Trump cannot ignore,” said Mark Maslin, Professor of Climatology at University College London.

Published in Dawn January 19th, 2017