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2015 was a scorcher of a year in the instrumental record. 

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It was very, very clearly the warmest year by a long chalk. 

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2014 was also a record year, but only by a little bit. 

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But 2015 has totally knocked that into the grass. 

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The temperatures are about 1.8 Fahrenheit above what it was in the 19th century, and 

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that's about halfway to the target that the UN Climate Talks have identified as the 

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target we should be avoiding if we want to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. 

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This record year really is just emphasizing the fact that there is a very, very strong 

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long-term trend in temperature that we have associated very strongly with the

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human emissions of greenhouse gases. 

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While one degree might not mean very much to you basically on a daily cycle,

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it really gets noticed by the planet and the systems on the planet. 

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Glaciers notice that the planet is more than a degree warmer than it is. 

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We've seen glaciers retreat almost everywhere where there are glaciers on the planet. 

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We've seen shifts in eco-zones, so where ecosystems are happiest

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these have been moving poleward and upward over the decades, 

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and that's going to continue. 

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We're currently in a big El Nino event, and that's going to persist through the spring 

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and perhaps into the summer. 

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2016 is going to start off very, very warm as well, and in fact,

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it might be as warm as 2015 going through the rest of the year. 

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We actually anticipate that 2016 might also be a record warm year, and that will be the 

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first time that we've had three record warm years in a row in the whole record. 

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When NASA first started talking about global warming, it was in 1988. 

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1988 was also a record year. 

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But with the record in now for 2015, 1988 is not even in the top 20 of warmest years.

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