Wasn't 2020 bad enough? (without breaking climate records too)

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.