Just how warm Earth stays this December will determine if 2020 goes down as the hottest year on record. And it’s looking a lot like it will.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calculated Monday that last month globally was the second hottest November on record, behind only 2015. Yet NASA and a European climate monitoring group said it was the hottest November on record. NASA has coverage over the poles that NOAA does not — and both the Arctic and Antarctic were very warm in November, NOAA climate scientist Ahira Sanchez-Lugo said to explain the difference.
Earth’s temperature in November was 56.95 degrees, which was 1.75 degrees above the 20th century average, according to NOAA. Nearly 7 percent of the world had record-warm November temperatures, including Australia and Norway.
NOAA’s calculations show that the first 11 months of 2020 were .02 degrees cooler than record-hot 2016, but there’s a 55 percent chance that 2020 will end up the warmest on record.