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Last year was Earth’s fifth-warmest year on record, European scientists said on Monday. But they said the fact that the average worldwide temperature isn’t breaking the record isn’t much of a reason to stop worrying about global warming’s impact on the planet.

when not both United States of America and Europe spent its hottest summers on the books. It’s not the first time high temperatures around the Arctic have caused rain on the normally cold summit of the Greenland ice sheet.

And certainly not when the seven hottest years ever recorded have been, by a wide margin, the last seven.

This 2021 events “It is a stark reminder of our need to change our ways, take decisive and effective action towards a sustainable society and work to reduce net carbon emissions,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The analysis was made public on Monday.

Last year, the global average temperature was 1.1 to 1.2 degrees Celsius (2 to 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than it was before industrialization began pumping large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.

According to Copernicus’ ranking, 2015 and 2018 were by far the fifth warmest year. The hottest years on record are 2016 and 2020 in a virtual bond.

Continued warming corresponds to the scientific consensus that increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are causing long-term changes in the global climate. Preliminary analysis of satellite measurements found that heat-trapping gas concentrations continued to rise last year, aided by 1,850 megatonnes of carbon emissions from worldwide wildfires, Copernicus said.

A big reason for 2021’s lower average temperature was its presence in the first part of the year. La Nina conditionsA recurring climate pattern characterized by lower surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. (La Niña is back This may herald a drier winter in the Southern United States and wetter conditions in the Pacific Northwest.)

These effects are on average for 2021, but are offset by higher temperatures in most parts of the world between June and October, Copernicus said.

“When we think about climate change, it’s not a single advance that gets the hottest every year,” said Robert Rohde, lead scientist at Berkeley Earth, an independent environmental research group.

Dr. “The preponderance of evidence from looking at ocean temperatures, land temperatures, upper atmosphere temperatures, melting glaciers, sea ice changes tells us a coherent story about changes in the earth system overall that point to warming,” Rohde said. aforementioned. “Slight changes up or down a year or two at a time, don’t change this picture.”

Berkeley Earth is expected to publish its own analysis of 2021 temperatures this month, as are two US government agencies: NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Unlike these groups, Copernicus uses a method called reanalysis, which produces a portrait of global weather conditions using a computer model that fills in the gaps between temperature measurements. Despite this, the results of the different groups are often pretty close in line.

As always, higher average temperatures across the planet in the past year have not been uniformly observed. Most of Australia and parts of Antarctica experienced below-normal temperatures in 2021, as did areas in western Siberia.

According to Copernicus, 2010 and 2018 were Europe’s hottest summer last year, although not far behind. heavy rain and flooding caused devastation and death in Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Heat and dryness paved the way for forest fires. devastated greece and other places around the Mediterranean.

The west coast of North America experienced unusual heat, drought and wildfires last summer. Canada’s maximum temperature record It broke in June in a small town in British Columbia when mercury reached 121.3 degrees Fahrenheit, or 49.6 degrees Celsius.

Scientists have concluded That the Pacific Coast heatwave would be practically impossible in a world without human-induced warming. The question is whether the event, even without precedent, fits into current meteorological understanding or is a sign that the climate is changing in ways that scientists don’t fully grasp.

Dr. “From where I currently sit, I tend to think that this is probably still a very rare event, even in the modern climate,” said Rohde. “But there is a degree of ‘wait and see’ involved.”

If the planet doesn’t experience heat events of similar intensity in the coming decades, scientists are likely to look back and see 2021 as extreme luck, he said. “It tells us that if we do, something has changed more fundamentally.”