World temperatures hit new high in 2016 for third year in a row

World temperatures hit a record high for the third year in a row in 2016, creeping closer to a ceiling set by the Paris climate change deal, with extremes including unprecedented heat in India and ice melt in the Arctic, scientists said on Wednesday.

The findings, providing new signs of the impact of greenhouse gases, were issued two days before the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who questions whether climate change has a human cause.

Average global surface temperatures in 2016 were 0.83 degree Celsius (1.5 Fahrenheit) above a long-term average of 14 degrees Celsius (57.2F) from 1961-1990, according to the U.N.-affiliated World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Geneva.

Temperatures, lifted mainly by man-made greenhouse gases and partly by a natural El Nino weather event that released heat from the Pacific Ocean, 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. Read more…