2015 to be hottest year ever, despite Britain snow

As many Britons prepared for a forecast Arctic blast on Thursday, figures from global climate experts were predicting a particularly warm 2016.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that 2015 had been the warmest year on record, with a sweltering summer for many in the northern hemisphere. In its latest figures, it reported October was not only the warmest ever, but also the largest deviation from usual temperatures for any month in the last 136 years.

Climate experts from the NOAA, NASA and the Japanese Meteorological Agency indicated they are now concerned about the El Nino weather pattern developing in the Pacific.

The warming of oceanic waters near the equator is usually associated with a warmer winter for many in the northern Pacific, and a drier summer for those in the south. The latest event had already contributed to strong Asian typhoons, ruined cocoa crops in Africa and massive fires in Indonesia.

While the 2015 El Nino wasn’t the worst just yet – that title remained with the 1997-98 event – all indications were that it could surge past the record. It’s generally accepted that the heat released into the atmosphere during an El Nino can linger as late as early summer, which experts alluded could make for warmer temperatures well into 2016.

Bloomberg described the current situation as “uncharted territory”, and said recent months were so extreme that even if November and December were unusually cool, 2015 would still be the hottest year on record.

“These new milestones follow the hottest summer on record, the hottest 12 months on record, the hottest calendar year on record (2014) and the hottest decade on record”, Bloomberg’s report stated.

The news came as cold comfort for Londoners, however, as the Met Office predicted the south east’s first snow of the season this weekend. Residents of the capital could look forward to temperatures as low as two degrees Celsius on Friday, forecasters said, before falling to zero on Saturday.