Last year ended up being tied for the warmest year on record globally, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It tied with 2016, but what makes 2020 particularly concerning is that it occurred during a La Nina pattern, where global temperatures are typically cooler.
The United States, over all, experienced it's fifth-warmest year on record with Europe experiencing it's warmest.
In Siberia, on the Arctic coast, inside the Arctic Circle, the first 100 degree temperature was recorded.
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All of the top five warmest years on record (globally) have occurred since 2012.
Remember, we are in the middle of what is called the Holocene interglacial. With our millions of years of ice core sampling and ocean sediment data, we know that temperatures during the Holocene interglacial should be cooling. We were cooling until the Industrial Revolution, which was the start of anthropogenic climate change.
These aren't the only records we set during 2020.
We saw a total of 22 disasters which resulted in damages of at least $1 billion. The previous record for the number of disasters with a billion-dollar-or-higher price tag was 16, which occurred in 2016 and 2011.
