It was a hot time on this old Earth – all year long in 2021. It was the fifth-hottest year on record and one of the seven hottest on record in the past seven years.
Let’s repeat that. Seven years of record hottest Earth years – 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015.
European scientists announced the finding Monday and it was chronicled in a story by The New York Times printed in the Chattanooga Times Free Press on Tuesday.
Those same scientists caution that the fact this year’s worldwide average temperature didn’t beat the No. 1 record, a virtual tie between 2020 and 2016, is no reason to stop worrying about global warming’s ominous grip on the planet.
Not when both the United States and Europe had their warmest summers on the books, Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus Climate Change Services, told the NYT. And not when higher temperatures around the Arctic caused it to rain for the first time at the Greenland ice sheet’s normally frigid summit.