2015 the hottest year on record – doesn’t make the headlines

2015 was the first full year to break the 1C barrier above pre-industrial levels – a key benchmark for warming

UK Met Office figures show that 2015 was 0.75C warmer than the long-term average between 1961-1990. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a US federal agency, 2015 is the fourth time an annual global temperature has been set this century. 2015 also saw record high temperatures for 10 months, with five months showing the highest departure from the average of any month on record.

Go to the graphic and watch the average temperature rise relentlessly year after year play

“There is no evidence that [the] warming trend has slowed, paused, or hiatused at any point in the last few decades.” Gavin Schmidt, Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Climate change deniers will be out in force blaming El Nino but as Prof Katharine Hayhoe, director of the climate science centre at Texas Tech University has pointed out  “The reason that 2015 has not just broken the record but has blown past it is because we are seeing a long-term temperature trend interact with the strongest El Niño of our generation. … What we have this year is the long-term rate of change with an extra spike of El Niño on top,”