The hottest year on which record?

Did you know that 2014 was the hottest year ever recorded in the entire history of the world? Probably you did because it’s been all over the papers. Not only that but President Obama slipped it into his State of the Union address and the president of the World Bank quoted it at Davos and the singer and rap producer Pharrell Williams is so concerned that he plans to stage a series of Live Earth concerts with Al Gore to emphasise the seriousness of the problem.

And these luminaries must know what they’re talking about, right? After all, it’s not just one distinguished scientific institution which has endorsed the ‘2014: hottest year on record’ claim, but a whole clutch of them.

First out of the gates was the Japanese meteorological office, then our own Met Office, then most recently Nasa’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies. These, in turn, were doing no more than agree with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.