Evan Caton, 12, and his brother Pierce, 8, of Falls Church, Virginia, beat the heat last month at the National Zoo with help from a misting station. The (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Earth’s fever got worse last year, breaking dozens of climate records, scientists said in a huge report nicknamed the “annual physical” for the planet.
Soon after 2015 ended, it was called the hottest year on record. The new report shows that many other records were set on the planet’s climatic health. Those include record heat energy absorbed by the oceans, and lowest ground-water storage levels globally, according to Tuesday’s report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The 2015 State of the Climate report examined 50 aspects of climate, including melting of Arctic sea ice and glaciers worldwide. A dozen nations, including Russia and China, set hottest-year records.
“This impacts people,” said NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden, co-editor of the report. “This is real life.”
She said that all three major heat-trapping greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — hit record highs last year.
Scientists said the turbocharged climate affected walrus and penguin populations. And it caused drought and deadly heat waves, especially in India and Pakistan.
Much of the intense record-breaking was because of a combination of a natural El Niño — the periodic warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather globally — and ever increasing man-made global warming.
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