January 18, 2017

expert reaction to confirmation that 2016 was the warmest on record

2016 was the warmest year on record according to a consolidated analysis by the World Meteorological Organization.

Prof. Piers Forster, Director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds, said:

“Even if you remove the extra warming due to El Nino, 2016 was the warmest year ever recorded. Such warm years increase heavy rainfall and damage crops. 2017 will likely be cooler. However, unless we have a major volcanic eruption, I expect the record to be broken again within a few years.”

Prof. Gabi Hegerl, Professor of Climate System Science at the University of Edinburgh, said:

“For science, another record, and another year to test our models and narrow down projections of future climate. Meanwhile, cumulative carbon is increasing. Time is getting tight for avoiding dangerous climate change.”

Prof. Peter Stott, Acting Director of the Met Office Hadley Centre, said:

“The final figures confirm that 2016 was yet another extremely warm year. In the HadCRUT4 dataset the temperature for last year was very close to the year before, temperatures for 2016 exceeding those for 2015 by a small margin. 2015 was remarkable for having stood out so clearly from previous years as the warmest year since 1850 and now 2016 turns out to have been just as warm.

“A particularly strong El Niño event contributed about 0.2C to the annual average for 2016, which was about 1.1C above the long term average from 1850 to 1900. However, the main contributor to warming over the last 150 years is human influence on climate from increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

Prof. Tim Osborn, Director of Research at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, said:

“Multiple lines of independent evidence confirm that the planet has warmed over the last 150 years: warmer oceans, warmer land, warmer lower atmosphere and melting ice. This long-term trend is the main cause for the record warmth of 2015 and 2016, surpassing all previous years – even ones with strong El Niño events – in the HadCRUT4 global temperature record.”

Prof. Mark Maslin, Professor of Climatology at University College London, said:

“The idea of a pause or a hiatus in global warming must now be abandoned with the announcement that 2016 was the warmest year on record.  Climate change is one of the great challenges of the twenty first century and shows no signs of slowing down.  The decarbonization of the global economy is the ultimate goal to prevent the worst effects of climate change. The hottest year on record is such a clear warning siren that even President-elect Trump cannot ignore.”

Prof. Dave Reay, Professor of Carbon Management at the University of Edinburgh, said:

“That 2016 was the hottest year on record comes as no big surprise. The combination of a strong El Nino event with human-induced climate warming was the perfect recipe for another record-breaker. What’s more worrying is that, even without the El Nino event, global temperatures would have been up in record territory.

“Short-lived swings in global temperature due to things like El Nino or volcanic eruptions have always been the waves atop the long term tidal cycle that is climate. Through our carbon emissions we have now radically altered this cycle and the tide is rising fast.”

Prof. Michael Grubb, Professor of International Energy and Climate Change at University College London, said:

“One great challenge for our times is to ensure that scientific realities triumph over political expediencies.

“Given the UK’s strong track record on climate change, perhaps Boris Johnson could comment on the global temperature trends and the UK’s future climate diplomacy?

Dr Chris Huntingford from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology said:

“There is often much emotion about climate change, but it is worth remembering that at the heart of the debate is an issue of physics. As greenhouse gas concentrations rise, then this adjusts how easily energy from the Sun is re-released back out to space. Higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels imply higher temperatures, and hence on-going use of fossil fuels can be expected to repeatedly cause previous warming records to be broken.”

Hui Yang, visiting scientist to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and from Peking University, said:

“One of the challenges of climate science is to understand how further general increases in the temperature of the planet will translate in to adjustments to weather features and including extreme events. If warming continues, society may need to increase preparations for and manage any risks associated with changing weather patterns.”

Prof. Meric Srokosz, Marine Physics and Ocean Climate Scientist at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), University of Southampton, said:

“The continuing rise in atmospheric CO2, now over 400ppm, is leading to an inexorable rise in global temperatures and the latest global average temperature figures for 2016, showing it to be the warmest year on record, are further evidence of humanity’s impact on our planet.”

Declared interests

None declared