The year 2021 ended as the fifth hottest in records maintained by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service that go back to 1979. That finding comes from publicly available data analyzed by Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist who posted his calculations on Twitter . This is among the first readings of last year’s temperature data but it won’t be the last. Copernicus is expected to release its full results later this month. Additional global temperature data will be released from NASA, NOAA, the U.K. Met Office, and Berkeley Earth, which draw on records dating back to the 19th century. Officials from Copernicus did not respond to requests for comment on data posted to the agency’s website. Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkley Earth, said in an email it’s likely that other data sources will rank 2021 somewhere between the fifth- and seventh-hottest years on record. Last year did […]