Climatology

FILE - In this Nov. 1, 2019, file photo, flames from a backfire consume a hillside as firefighters battle the Maria Fire in Santa Paula, Calif. The decade that just ended was by far the hottest ever measured on Earth, capped off by the second-warmest year on record, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2020. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

In this Monday, Dec. 30, 2019, aerial photo, wildfires rage under plumes of smoke in Bairnsdale, Australia. Thousands of tourists fled Australia's wildfire-ravaged eastern coast Thursday ahead of worsening conditions as the military started to evacuate people trapped on the shore further south. (Glen Morey via AP)

In this March 2016 photo provided by The Island Institute, Bigelow Laboratory Research Associate Brittney Honisch measures a piece of sugar kelp before harvest in Casco Bay, Maine. A group of scientists with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and farmers in northern New England are working on a plan to feed seaweed to cows to gauge whether it can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. (Scott Sell/The Island Institute via AP)

FILE - In this Jan. 1. 2017 file photo, confetti falls as people celebrate the new year in New York's Times Square. This year's New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square will spotlight efforts to combat climate change when high school science teachers and students press the button that begins the famous 60-second ball drop and countdown to next year. “On New Year’s Eve, we look back and reflect on the dominant themes of the past year, and seek hope and inspiration as we look forward," Times Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins said in a statement Saturday, Dec. 28, 2019 announcing the plan. He said the honorees “are working to solve this global problem through science.” (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, File)

In this Nov. 25, 2019 photo, highway BR-163 stretches between the Tapajos National Forest, left, and a soy field in Belterra, Para state, Brazil. Carved through jungle during Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s, this highway and BR-230, known as the Trans-Amazon, were built to bend nature to man’s will in the vast hinterland. Four decades later, there’s development taking shape, but also worsening deforestation. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Activist protest outside of the COP25 climate talks congress in Madrid, Spain, Saturday, Dec. 14, 2019. The United Nations Secretary-General has warned that failure to tackle global warming could result in economic disaster. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg addresses plenary of U.N. climate conference during with a meeting with leading climate scientists at the COP25 summit in Madrid, Spain, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019. Thunberg is in Madrid where a global U.N.-sponsored climate change conference is taking place. (AP Photo/Paul White)

In this Nov. 27, 2019, photo, Georgia Tech professor Kim Cobb poses for a photo at her home in Atlanta. Some climate scientists and activists, including Cobb, are limiting their flying, their consumption of meat and their overall carbon footprints to avoid adding to the global warming they study. (AP Photo/John Amis)

Kjetil Wormnes, automation and robotics system engineer, poses with the Space Rover after a training exercise of the European Space Agency, ESA, in Katwijk, near The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, Nov. 25, 2019. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)