Greenhouse gas concentration likely played a role in setting all of last 16 yearly global temperature records

In a new research paper on climate and impact of greenhouse gases, scientists have informed that global temperatures in 1937 were record-breaking for that time. Two years later, the heat record was broken again, and more records were set in 1940, 1941 and 1944.

It is for the first time ever that climate scientists have got to know the role of greenhouse gas pollution in global temperatures measured at the time of record-breaking years back to 1937, when industrialized cities and nations kept on burning coal to provide power to trains and factories.

Daniel Mitchell, an Oxford University physicist, who has been closely monitoring climate change, said what they have got to know was that they may actually find out human influence on worst events much earlier than they’d thought.

Mitchell belongs to the international team of scientists that published the results in Geophysical Research Letters this week.

The latest global record was set last year and it easily surpassed a record set in 2014. This year’s first two months have apparently broken monthly temperature records.

With the help of Earth models, the team of scientists reproduced likely temperatures for every single year since 1901. Some models succeeded in replicating the effects of greenhouse gas present in the atmosphere during that time, while others did not.

After comparing the results, the researchers reached on a conclusion that there were more chances than not that greenhouse gas pollution played a part in setting all previous 16 annual global temperature records.

Last year’s record saw average temperatures of 1°C above the ones of the late 19th century. In December, a United Nations climate agreement was done in Paris with an aim to keep warming ‘well below’ 2°C.

The warming effects of fossil fuel use and deforestation were comparatively low 80 years back, when compared with the part played by them in rapid-fire records set lately.