The world has been its hottest on record for 10 months straight. Scientists can't fully explain why
NASA's senior climate advisor Gavin Schmidt says while climate change and the onset of El Niño explain a significant portion of last year's heat, together with other contributing factors, there is still a margin of heat at the top that can't be explained.
He said that was concerning.
"If we can't explain what's going on, then that has real consequences for what we can say is going to happen in the future," Dr Schmidt said.
Dr Schmidt said there was always room for error, but usually scientists could explain what occurred upon looking back at the data.
He said this time it was not adding up. And the climate models were giving them no answers either.
"It means there's something missing in what we're thinking about here," he said.
"Either something has changed in the system and things are responding differently to how they responded in the past, or there are other elements that are happening that we didn't take into account."
