Science Source

Record Temperature Streak Bears Anthropogenic Fingerprint

Uses a previously developed semi-empirical approach to assess the likelihood of the sequence of consecutive record-breaking temperatures in 2014, 2015, and 2016
Combines information from historical temperature data and state-of-the-art historical climate model simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5)
Finds that this sequence of record-breaking temperatures had a negligible (<0.03%) likelihood of occurrence in the absence of anthropogenic warming
Finds that it was still a rare but not implausible event (roughly 1-3% likelihood) taking anthropogenic warming into effect
Estimates the probability that three consecutive records would have been observed at some point since 2000 as ~30-50% given anthropogenic warming, and <0.7% in its absence