Earth Was Due for Another Year of Record Warmth. But This Warm?

Earth is finishing up its warmest year in the past 174 years, and very likely the past 125,000. From a report: Unyielding heat waves broiled Phoenix and Argentina. Wildfires raged across Canada. Flooding in Libya killed thousands. Wintertime ice cover in the dark seas around Antarctica was at unprecedented lows. This year's global temperatures did not just beat prior records. They left them in the dust. From June through November, the mercury spent month after month soaring off the charts. December's temperatures have largely remained above normal: Much of the Northeastern United States is expecting springlike conditions this week.

That is why scientists are already sifting through evidence -- from oceans, volcanic eruptions, even pollution from cargo ships -- to see whether this year might reveal something new about the climate and what we are doing to it. One hypothesis, perhaps the most troubling, is that the planet's warming is accelerating, that the effects of climate change are barreling our way more quickly than before. 'What we're looking for, really, is a bunch of corroborating evidence that all points in the same direction,' said Chris Smith, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds. 'Then we're looking for causality. And that will be really interesting.'

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