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Last year tied as world's fifth-warmest on record, U.S. scientists say
Last year was the world’s joint-fifth warmest year on record and the last nine years were the nine warmest since pre-industrial times, as climate change continued to raise temperatures and fuel extreme weather, U.S. scientists said on Thursday.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
State of Play
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.