washingtonpost.com | Article Link | by Chris Mooney

It is official: According to both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the year 2014 was the hottest ever measured, based on records going back to the year 1880.

It now surpasses all past scorchers, including 1998, 2005, and 2010. Indeed, except for 1998, says NASA, the 10 hottest years recorded have all occurred since the year 2000.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the new record is that it occurred even though 2014 was not an El Niño year, of the sort that usually powers the already up-trending global average temperature to new highs.

"This is the first year since 1997 that the record warmest year was not an El Niño year at the beginning of the year, because the last three have been," says Gavin Schmidt, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which collaborated on the analysis.

Read more...