2020 will be remembered for different things – but it was also yet another stinker of a year from a climate perspective.
2020 was the second hottest year on record – just 0.02 degrees Celsius behind 2016’s record. That’s virtually a dead heat. In Europe and Asia 2020 actually was the warmest year on record.
This is a bit worrying considering that in weather terms it’s a La Nina year – meaning that it’s cooler than we would otherwise expect.
In the bigger picture, the last seven years (2014 – 2020) are the seven hottest since records began (in 1880).
The ten hottest years have all occurred since 2005.
More worrying still is that many people I know weren’t even born the last time we had a regular-temperature year.
Further fascinating graphs
I’ve done a number of these posts over the years – and it’s scary how each record-breaking change in climate change is surpassed by another (as you can see on the above graph). Here are my posts for the years 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014 and 2017.
