Did Earth Just Score Its Hottest Year on Record?

By Paul Rusnak|January 21, 2021

If at times it felt like hell on Earth in the past year, your feeling wasn’t just imagined. NOAA scientists are ranking 2020 as the second-hottest year on record for the planet — just barely behind 2016.

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April-May: Florida on Fire

The Sunshine State experienced a late-developing dry season last spring. Windy and extremely dry conditions were perfect fuel for this wildfire in Southwest Florida.

Photo courtesy of FDACS/Florida Forest Service
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Light it up

This wildfire in Southwest Florida lights up the night sky.

Photo courtesy of FDACS/Florida Forest Service
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August-Sept.: California Wildfires

Wildfires across the western U.S. were devastating for weeks on end.

Photo courtesy of National Park Services
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Smoke in the Air

Fires aside, smoke and ash are major threats to crops and fieldworkers alike.

Photo by Anita Oberholster
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August: Historic Hurricane Season

Hurricane Laura ramped up to nearly Category 5 status before slamming into Cameron, LA, on Aug. 27, 2020.

Photo courtesy of NOAA
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A Blow to Agriculture

The preliminary assessment of damage to agriculture from Hurricane Laura from the LSU AgCenter was $525,375,772, not including damage to timber. For perspective, the total economic impact of agriculture in Louisiana is about $11 Billion.

Photo courtesy of the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation
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Timber!

This drone shot shows downed trees in part of Louisiana's Kisatchie National Forest. The LSU AgCenter estimated that timber damage from Hurricane Laura totaled $1.1 billion.

Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service
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September: Here Comes Sally

Hurricane Sally, the second land-falling hurricane for the U.S. Gulf Coast in weeks, unloaded copious amounts of precipitation on the region, soaking many acres of crops.

Photo courtesy of NASA
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Lay Down, Sally

Rains from Hurricane Sally soaked the Florida Panhandle, including this soybean planting experiment in Jay.
Photo by Clyde Fraisse
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Cotton Wash

Lots of rain and open cotton bolls don't go together. This handful of soggy cotton was one of the leftovers from Hurricane Sally in Florida's Panhandle.

Photo courtesy of FDACS
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Tic-Tac-Toe, Anyone?

The peak of hurricane season had the Atlantic basin lit up like a game board.

Graphic courtesy of NOAA
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October: Hot-Blooded

The Northern Hemisphere tallied its hottest summer on record, according to NOAA. That theme would carry 2020 toward the top of the charts.
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La Niña in Control

What kind of winter weather is ahead for 2021? As of this posting, the La Niña climate phase is dominant. And it has a typical pattern.

Graphic courtesy of NOAA

The average land and ocean surface temperature across the globe in 2020 was 1.76°F above average — just 0.04 of a degree cooler than the 2016 record, according to NOAA data. The Northern Hemisphere, however, saw its hottest year on record at 2.30°F above the 20th-century average.

The record-setting heat shouldn’t be a surprise though as the year saw severe weather headlines ranging from drought and raging wildfires, to an extremely-active Atlantic hurricane season that reached far past normal naming conventions into the Greek alphabet.

Scroll through the photo slideshow above for some wild weather moments of 2020

But, did 2020 really lose out by such a close margin? Researchers from NASA and U.K.-based Copernicus have 2020 and 2016 in a dead heat for the top spot. Ironic a recount may be in order for years in question that fall coincidentally in line with the presidential election.