This happened despite a La Ni a weather phenomenon that was supposed to cool off the Earth a bit. That data strengthens the scientific case for an ever-warming world, meteorologists said. Each year of the 1990s ranks among the 15 hottest years since 1880, when official records were first compiled. We're now more willing to admit that global warming is occurring. The debate now is how much warming is going to be in the future.
Symptoms are increasingly visible.
The world warmed by 1 in the 20 th century and is projected to warm by an additional 1.8 -6.3 by 2100. Affects anticipated during the next 50 years in the United States include an increased risk of summer drought plus more hurricanes that are also of greater strength. Finally, even if the current global warming isn't man-made, there is now evidence that the ice age that gripped the Earth for thousands of years ended much more abruptly than previously thought, suggesting that the world's climate can change significantly in just a few decades. It happened within just a couple of decades. The old idea was that the temperature would change over a thousand years.