Morning Must-Read: Joe Romm: 2014 Was Hottest Year On Record Globally By Far, Reports Japan Meteorological Agency

…by far… [with] no ‘hiatus’ or ‘pause’ in warming. In fact, there has not even been a slowdown…. 1998 is in (a distant) second place–but 1998 was an outlier… boosted above the trendline by an unusual super-El Niño…. If you were wondering how 2014 could be the hottest year on record when it wasn’t particularly hot in the United States (if we ignore California and Alaska)… there’s like a whole planet out there…. Europe was the hottest it’s been in 500 years…. California had record-smashing heat, which helped create its ‘most severe drought in the last 1200 years.’ Australia broke heat records across the continent (for the second year running)….

Much of Siberia ‘defrosted in spring and early summer under temperatures more than 9°F (5°C) above its 1981 to 2010 average’… the second exceptionally hot summer in a row for the region…. The permafrost (soon to be renamed the permamelt) contains twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere. If we don’t reverse emissions trends sharply and soon, then the carbon released from it this century alone could boost global warming as much as 1.5°F…”