Despite Recent Cold, This Was Warmest Year On Record

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- We're all feeling the effects of our current cold weather, but for the planet, it's all about the heat.

Alex DeMetrick reports we've just had the warmest year on record.

When it comes to weather, we all live in the moment. But when it comes to climate, decades and even centuries are counted on a global scale.

"2015 is actually the warmest year that we have on the recorded record, using surface temperature information," said Dr. Steven Pawson, NASA Goddard Space Center.

Information is gathered by a fleet of NASA satellites and downloaded to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, measuring the effect of the greenhouse gases man has been pumping into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.

"As they accumulate, they absorb more and more heat and the surface temperature is increasing," Pawson said.

Almost a two degree increase, which might now seem like much but it's enough to start extreme changes---like the warmest December on record for not just the East Coast but for much of the planet. On the ground, droughts now last years. And from an instrument in space...

"Which is clearly detecting ice mass loss from Greenland that's flowing into the oceans, we can use altimeter techniques to measure the sea surface height to show that the oceans are increasing in depth so sea level is rising," Pawson said. "All these things are consistent with global warming."

And as long as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate...

"...then temperatures going to continue to rise," he said.

Which will generate more extreme changes.

NASA researchers say 2014 had been the warmest year on record but 2015 easily surpassed it.