An analysis by NASA reveals that the average surface temperature on Earth in 2022 is tied with 2015 as the fifth warmest on record. Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ranked 2022 in sixth place.
According to experts at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), global temperatures in 2022 were 0.89 degrees Celsius (1.6 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average for NASA's baseline period (1951-1980).
Alarming Global Warming Trend
Since modern recording started in 1880, the last nine years have been the warmest on record. This suggests that the Earth in 2022 will be 1.11°C (2°F) warmer than the late-nineteenth-century average.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson warned that the global warming trend is concerning and noted that the changing climate is already leaving a mark in forests, generating stronger storms, drought wreaking havoc, and sea levels rising.
The space agency is strengthening its commitment to combating climate change through its Earth System Observatory, which provides cutting-edge data to create climate models, analysis, and projections so humankind could better deal with the changing climate.
According to SciTech Daily, NASA's map illustrates 2022 worldwide temperature anomalies but does not display absolute temperatures as it only indicates how much warmer or colder each part of the planet is relative to the years between 1951-1980 on average. Gavin Schmidt from NASA explained that the rising trend is usually because of human activities that account for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Although human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have recovered after a brief decrease in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, NASA scientists and foreign experts recently concluded that carbon dioxide emissions in 2022 will be the greatest on record.
NASA also used the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) instrument, which was flown to the International Space Station (ISS) last year, to identify certain super-emitters of methane, another potent greenhouse gas.
The GISS data published at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, as well as a separate study, showed that the Arctic area continues to see the greatest warming trends-close to four times the world average.
Earth: The Warming Planet
NASA's global temperature analysis uses data from weather stations, Antarctic research stations, and devices mounted on ships and ocean buoys. According to the space station, they examine these observations to account for data errors and to maintain consistent methodologies for computing global average surface temperature variations each year.
These ground-based surface temperature observations are compatible with satellite data acquired since 2002 by NASA's Aqua satellite's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, as well as other estimates.
NASA utilizes the 1951-1980 period as a baseline to study how global temperatures vary over time. It takes into account natural fluctuations in Earth's temperature, such as La Niña and El Niño, as well as extremely hot or cold years caused by external influences.
On the other hand, NOAA concluded in their independent analysis that the global surface in 2022 was the sixth highest since 1880. They used almost the same raw temperature data with their analysis but a different baseline period from 1901-2000, and methodology.
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