Why in news?
2019 was the second hottest year, Research released by NASA and NOAA(USA) for 2019 shows that the decade that just ended was by far the hottest ever measured on Earth, capped off by the second warmest year on record
Details of 2019 was the second hottest year
- Since the 1960s, each decade has been warmer than the previous one, by significant amounts.
- While the 2010s continued this trend, the second half of the decade was especially warm — the five hottest years ever have occurred during that span
- 2019 was the second warmest year ever just shy of 2016.
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed that global average surface temperatures last year were nearly 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average from the middle of last century
- The studies take into account the contribution of natural influences, or forces, on climate, like volcanic eruptions that can temporarily cool the atmosphere or regular changes in Earth’s orbital cycle
- Driven in largely by emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels.
- These trends are the footprints of human activity stomping on the atmosphere
- 2019 only continued a long-term warming trend, one that has led to increased melting of the state’s thousands of glaciers, thawing of permanently frozen ground, or permafrost, and a lack of sea-ice coverage in some of the Arctic waters
- The Bering Sea, off Alaska’s northwest coast, was ice-free for much of 2019
- UN said that 2019 was second hottest year ever and the average global temperature in 2019 was 1.1 degree Celsius (34°F) above pre-industrial levels.
