Ten facts on climate science
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People say the world isn’t really getting warmer, some years are just hotter than others, and it varies/goes around in cycles
The first decade of this century has been, by far, the warmest decade on the instrumental record. Despite 1998 being the warmest individual year, the last ten years have clearly been the warmest period in the 160-year record of global surface temperature.
Over the last 100 years the Earth has warmed by about 0.75 degrees Celsius and the speed it is warming at is getting faster. These days the UK Spring arrives about ten days earlier than it did in the 1970s. In 160 years of records, the ten hottest years have been in the last 13 years.
Arctic sea ice is melting; the September summer minimum extent has shrunk by about 10% every ten years since the late 70s. The smallest amounts of Arctic summer ice on record were in the last three years: 2007-2009. In a few decades, large parts of the Arctic Ocean are expected to have no late summer sea-ice at all.
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