Category: Temple

2015 was the hottest year on record


milanfountainheat08202015getty

Last year was the hottest recorded on Earth since officials began tracking temperature trends in 1880, federal scientists announced Wednesday.

The 2015 record breaks the one set in 2014, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA said, but the degree to which it bested that mark is unprecedented.

The average surface temperature across the globe was 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average. That broke the previous year’s record by nearly 0.3 degrees, the largest margin by which a temperature record has been broken, the agencies said.

2015 became the fourth year since 2000 to break the annual temperature record. Ten months broke their monthly temperature marks last year, the agencies added, including five that bested the previous mark by record-high margins.

Officials said Wednesday that the record can be tied directly to long-term warming trends, the basis for climate change science. Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that trend is set to accelerate due to growing carbon emissions around the world.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/266433-2015-was-the-hottest-year-on-record

Tags: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, temperature

 

ISIS reported to have blown up ancient temple in Palmyra


The burgeoning list of appalling acts by ISIS has grown even longer: The Islamic extremist group has blown up a nearly 2,000-year-old temple in the historic ruins of Palmyra, Syria.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s director-general of antiquities and museums, said Sunday that sources in Palmyra informed him that ISIS members rigged the Temple of Baalshamin with large quantities of explosives and detonated them.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/24/middleeast/syria-isis-palmyra-ruins-temple/