National Aeronautical and Space Agency (NASA) has come out with study showing the six-month period from January to June as the planet’s warmest half-year on record, and also had the lowest Arctic sea ice extent since satellite records began in 1979.The agency says two key climate change indicators – global surface temperatures and Arctic sea ice extent – have broken numerous records through the first half of this year. Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, which dates to 1880. The agency scientists say six-month period from January to June was also the planet’s warmest half-year on record, with an average temperature 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than the late 19th century. Five of the first six months of this year also set records for the smallest respective monthly Arctic sea ice extent since consistent satellite records began in 1979, according to analyses developed by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre. The one exception, March, recorded the second smallest extent for that month. The scientists say that global temperature and Arctic sea ice are continuing their decades-long trends of change. Both trends are ultimately driven by rising concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The extent of Arctic sea ice at the peak of the summer melt season now typically covers 40 per cent less area than it did in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It has been a record year so far for global temperatures, but the record high temperatures in the Arctic over the past six months have been even more extreme. India too has turned hotter in the last two decades with heat waves having longer durations and greater frequency, thereby resulting in more deaths. Old timers in hill stations blame the rise in temperatures to unregulated construction activities, traffic pollution and increasing deforestation which has left large swathes of the Himalayan mountain slopes without any covering.
