Satellite confirms key NASA temperature data: The planet is warming — and fast

A high-profile NASA temperature data set, which has pronounced the last five years the hottest on record and the globe a full degree Celsius warmer than in the late 1800s, has found new backing from independent satellite records — suggesting the findings are on a sound footing, scientists reported Tuesday.

The temperature hovered around 100 degrees at the
 Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Mo., in July 2016.

If anything, the researchers found, the pace of climate change could be somewhat more severe than previously acknowledged, at least in the fastest warming part of the world — its highest latitudes.

“We may actually have been underestimating how much warmer [the Arctic’s] been getting,” said Gavin Schmidt, who directs NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which keeps the temperature data, and who was a co-author of the new study released in Environmental Research Letters.

Read the story from The Washington Post by Chris Mooney - “Satellite confirms key NASA temperature data: The planet is warming — and fast.”