September 2014 warmest on record, says Nasa

AFP FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — September of 2014 was the warmest on record for planet Earth since 1880.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration said that September was the warmest on record since global records have been taken, Time Magazine’s website reported on Monday.

Last August was also previously the warmest on record, a suggestion of an “unfortunate trend in global heating,” the report added.

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration anticipates that an El Niño will start by the end of the year, due to warmer temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, and continue into spring 2015. An El Niño can have devastating impact across the globe, with repercussions that include abnormal temperatures and extreme weather. The last strong El Niño occurred in 1997-98,” Time said.

Citing an interview with Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and climate modeler at Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Huffington Post said that although these temperature records are significant, they are just one piece of the data that “point[s] towards the long-term trends of warming.”

The Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, meanwhile, said in an earlier forecast that El Niño, which is characterized by unusually warm ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, may peak during the last quarter of 2014 and may last up to the first quarter of 2015.

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