It's Official: 2014 Was the Hottest Year on Record (watch the data unfold)

It's Official: 2014 Was the Hottest Year on Record:


This is a very cool -- oops, hot, I mean -- visual of the earth temperatures over recent decades.

As you will see, the monthly averages and the annual averages spike up year after year. Only a few monthly numbers are higher now then in 1995 and almost no monthly numbers are higher than the 20th century average.


2014 was unusual as a hot year because is was not an el nino year. This was a "normal" year in which 5 of the hottest months on record occurred. 2014 outpaced the prior hottest months of 2010 and 2005.


You have to go back a decade to find a coldest record month. That's some ugly statistics, no matter how you look at it.

Here's a different graphic of combined land and surface temperatures in this US Today article. Notice that you could start over with a trend line at about 1995 and produce a new trend line that is simply higher than the historical average of a century.

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