This Is Your Life on Climate Change
The 2010s were the hottest decade ever measured on Earth, and 2019 was the second-hottest year ever measured, scientists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced today.
After a year of flash droughts, rampant wildfires, and searing heat waves that set all-time records across Europe and turned parts of Greenland’s ice sheet into slush, the finding was not a surprise to researchers, or likely anyone else. But it capped an anxious decade that saw human-caused climate change transform from a far-off threat into an everyday fact of life.
Last year was 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit—or just under 1 degree Celsius—warmer than the 20th-century average, Gavin Schmidt, the chief climate scientist at NASA, said at a briefing announcing the news. Almost everywhere on the planet’s surface was warmer than average, though the Arctic was especially searing. “Every decade since the 1960s has been
