'State of the Climate' Report: 2015 Set Multiple Records

"Last year officially surpassed 2014 as the warmest year ever noted on record," according to an article by Madeleine Thomas. But that's not the only climate-related record that fell in 2015. "Rising oceans, accumulating atmospheric greenhouse gasses, and escalating temperatures on both sea and land all reached new record highs in 2015," adds Thomas

That documentation of these new milestones are presented in the "State of the Climate" report, by the American Meteorological Society and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information, released on August 2, 2016.

The report is described as an "annual physical" for the planet, with findings generated by 450 scientists from 62 countries. Thomas summarizes some of the most significant milestones revealed by the report in the article. For an example of the alarms sounded by the report, Thomas writes that in 2015, "annual average atmospheric C02 levels passed 400 ppm for the first time in more than three million years."