NASA and NOAA jointly reported that 2016 was the warmest year on record. That’s no surprise, as the first six months of the year were all exceptionally warm.
Yet the news is significant for what it says about global warming: Before 2016, the 10 hottest years on record occurred since 1998. And last year was the third consecutive year a new global annual temperature record has been set.
Despite the ongoing record-breaking heat planet-wide, skepticism over anthropogenic, or human-made, global warming remains. To some, the fact that meteorologists can’t reliably forecast the weather days in advance is proof that scientists can’t predict the Earth’s climate years or decades from now.
Why do scientists like myself have confidence in predicting record heat months in advance, and how do climate predictions differ from weather forecasting?
