2019 to be second hottest year ever

We now have data for the first 10 months of 2019.  The 12 months to October 2019 were the second hottest ever recorded in the record going back to the 1880s, so it is very likely 2019 will also be the second hottest ever recorded.  This is not an El Niño year like 2015 or 1998, which is normally when records tend to get broken.  Note how after 1998, it took 12 years for that record to be broken.  After the latest El Niño, temperatures have risen so fast we are already at risk of new record temperatures even without an El Niño.  Note that all the hottest years have been in the last five years.

This is what the 5 year moving average looks like.  The decadal rate of rise in temps has increased, from 0.2 C/decade to 0.3 C/decade.  Too early to say whether this is the new trend, but it would be perfectly consistent with the acceleration in the level of emissions.  At 0.3 C/decade global temperatures will have risen 3.5 degrees C from pre-industrial levels by 2100.  And that will have catastrophic consequences.

Source: NOAA