Sixteen Record-Heat Years Traced To Human Activity

Researchers at UCLA are looking at precipitation to make climate models more accurate. (Credit: NOAA)

In a release from the American Geophysical Union, scientists showed that human activity was to blame for record-breaking recent heat all over the globe. Their study traced the effects of human interference on climate change back to 1937, the first record-breaking year of the 16 hottest recorded up to 2014.

The researchers examined weather records of phenomena outside normal weather patterns. They then used climate models to see what the patterns could have been like without human-induced greenhouse gases. Scientists found that the unusual events were so far out of the norm that it was not likely that they would have occurred without human production of the gases.

The study included central Europe, central England, the central U.S., East Asia and Australia. The Australian data proved to be of particular value because its location in the Southern Hemisphere, in the middle of the ocean, showed warming before other regions did.

The study also found that industrial aerosols had caused a cooling effect all over the globe that masked global warming effects. But once the aerosols were removed from the atmosphere, the Earth became warmer.

Top image: Researchers are looking into the history of climate change. (Credit: NOAA)