2020 - The Hottest Year on Record

The Washington Post reports that 2020 has tied with 2016 as being the hottest year on record. In fact the last seven years have been the hottest seven years since reliable weather measurements began. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Britain’s Met Office and Berkeley Earth 2020 was a few tenths of a degree cooler than 2016, while NASA say that it was very slightly warmer. 

In 2020 Rivals Hottest Year on Record the Post lists some of the extreme weather events in 2020 that were caused by extreme global heating. These include the unprecedented wildfires experienced in Australia, the United States and the Siberian Arctic. The Atlantic experienced a record hurricane season and around the world more tropical cyclones occurred last year than in any previous year. These extreme weather events are of course just a preview of the far more extreme events we can expect over the coming years.

The Post's article is illustrated with an animated globe which spins to highlight how much higher temperatures were at locations around the world last year compared to average temperatures in the 1800's. This globe includes a heat map layer which visualizes the rise in 2020 average temperatures. As the globe spins cities are shown on the map with labels revealing how many degrees temperatures were higher last year when compared to those of the 1800's.