NASA: February Breaks Global Temperature Record By STUNNING MARGIN

Global temperatures have been smashing many old records for the past many months, and now a new NASA report adds February 2016 in the list of record-breaker months. According to the report, the shortest month of the year has broken century-old temperature record with a huge margin.
In February, the average surface temperature across the globe was about 1.35 degrees Celsius warmer than the average global surface temperature in February from 1951 to 1980, as per data collected by NASA. The margin was stunning as previous record was set by January 2016 when the average temperature was 1.15 degree Celsius warmer than long-term average for the month.

The new NASA report is a surprising climate report, said experts Jeff Masters and Bob Henson, who studied the data on the Weather Underground website. February 2016 broke last month’s record by 0.21 degree Celsius, which is actually a great margin, they added.


“This result is a true shocker, and yet another reminder of the incessant long-term rise in global temperature resulting from human-produced greenhouse gases. We are now hurtling at a frightening pace toward the globally agreed maximum of 2C warming over pre-industrial levels”,
Masters and Henson continued.

Scientists have linked the record surge in average global temperatures in 2016 to increasing global warming and El Nino weather event. They have urged governments around the world that participated in a Paris summit in December last year to take immediate actions to curb greenhouse gas emissions so that climate change can be slowed down.

In the Paris summit, 195 countries announced to cut greenhouse gas emissions to a net zero by 2100. They pledged to stop using fossil fuels and prefer greener energies like wind and solar power.

According to a report in Yahoo by Andrew Freedman, "According to NASA, the Japan Meteorological Agency and other research groups, February was the globe's warmest seasonally adjusted month on record, and the most unusually warm month since instrument records began in 1880. "

The magnitude of the warming seen in February was astounding even to scientists who, for good reason, tend to downplay the significance of an individual month in the context of the longer-term climate record.

"But we are seeing long-term changes. Since 1967, the U. S. Department of Agriculture's Plant Hardiness Zone numbers for Pennsylvania have been revised upward from 4 to 6 in the north and from 5 to 7 in the south, reflecting rising annual minimum and maximum temperatures here as in most of North America. The third National Climate Assessment Report (2014) noted that temperatures in the Northeast increased significantly between 1895 and 2011. As the report explains, a warming climate is expected to bring less frequent but heavier rainfall and other "extreme weather events," and the amount of precipitation "falling in very heavy events" in the Northeast increased more than 70 percent between 1958 and 2010," according to a news report published by Daily-Item.

Each of us individually has a role to play, but collectively we must develop alternative energy sources, create good and secure jobs to replace those that rely on fossil fuel extraction, and drastically cut emissions of CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases. We've initiated warming processes that we can't stop. However, we have time, if we have the will, to limit their effects and preserve our ability to live, with integrity and justice, in the only world we have.

In a report published by the SMH, "Global temperatures leapt in February, lifting warming from pre-industrial levels to beyond 1.5 degrees, and stoking concerns about a "climate emergency"."

By Karan Gosal