Source: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies New data from the U.S. government’s temperature takers just ranked 2021 as the sixth-hottest year, near the very top of a list that stretches back into the 19th century. The hottest eight entries in the federal heat records have all occurred in the last eight years. Last year’s global average temperature was at least 1.04°C above the average from 1880 to 1900, according to reports released Thursday by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NOAA and Berkley Earth, a research nonprofit. A dataset updated on Monday by the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service put 2021 in fifth place for heat. In a stable climate, without annual re-orderings at the top of the hottest-years list, the world should set hot and cold records about evenly. But as greenhouse gas pollution continues to rise, hot extremes are intensifying and becoming more frequent. Cold spells […]