2018 was the fourth hottest year since modern recordkeeping
began. NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration work together to track temperatures around the world and
study how they change from year to year. For decades, the overall global temperature
has been increasing.
Over the long term, world temperatures are warming, but each
individual year is affected by things like El Niño ocean patterns and specific
weather events.
1.5 degrees
Globally, Earth’s temperature was more than 1.5 degrees
Fahrenheit warmer than the average from 1951 to 1980.
The Record
139 years
Since 1880, we can put together a consistent
record of temperatures around the planet and see that it was much colder in the
late-19th century.
Before 1880, uncertainties in tracking global temperatures were too large.
Temperatures have increased even faster since the 1970s, the result of
increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Five Hottest
The last five years have been the hottest in the modern
record.
6,300 Individual
Observations
Scientists from NASA use data from 6,300 weather stations
and Antarctic research stations, together with ship- and buoy-based
observations of sea surface temperatures to track global temperatures.
The Consequences
605,830 swimming pools
As the planet warms, polar ice is melting at an accelerated
rate. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lost about 605,830 Olympic
swimming pools (400 billion gallons) of water between 1993 and 2016.
8 inches
Melting ice raises sea levels around the world. While ice
melts into the ocean, heat also causes the water to expand. Since 1880, sea
levels around the world have risen approximately 8 inches.
71,189 acres burned
One symptom of the warmer climate is that fire seasons burn
hotter and longer. In 2018, wildfires burned more than 71,189 acres in the U.S.
alone.
46% increase in CO2 levels
CO2 levels have increased 46 percent since the late 19th
Century, which is a dominant factor causing global warming.
The president begged for unity before unleashing a speech that focused squarely on his most controversial policy. A traditional show of support from the speaker of the House turned into a sarcastic instant meme.
Such is politics in 2019.
President Trump’s State of the Union speech can be measured in a number of ways: length (it was the longest such speech in almost 20 years); content (Trump predictably focused much of the speech on immigration, while also announcing a date and time for his next meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un); and, maybe most fittingly, the visuals.
From Nancy Pelosi’s applause to children nodding off on a school night to a historic first, here are the most important sights from the 96th State of the Union message.
![historium:
“That’s no doctrine of mine! Vote for the Social Democrats! [Slovenia, 1919]
”](https://64.media.tumblr.com/406b51978f15c74b0ce49c5350550c01/tumblr_pli47gREuL1txdeaio1_500.jpg)
